


A Gateway Carved of Charred Timber

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Clowns, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Frequently edited, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Miscarriage, Mpreg, Oral, Oral Sex, Oviparous Trolls, Oviposition, Rape/Non-con Elements, Rough Sex, Stockholm Syndrome, Timeline What Timeline, dubcon, nooks and bulges
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-15
Updated: 2016-09-23
Packaged: 2018-05-01 17:19:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 7
Words: 23,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5214278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fill for Kinkmeme. Prompt: </p><p>'So this kink usually always involves an Ampora brooding/laying the eggs, so let's give Karkat a turn. Bonus points if the highblood is an ancestor and considerably older than Karkat.'</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“Are you dying or are you coming wiggler?”

Perhaps he was doing both. The possibility that he simply was dying to come seemed more likely. Slurry slicked down his thighs, fat droplets gathering on his knees prior to plunging into the neutral carpeting below them. The color was indescribable, rendered into a pastiche of the whole hemospectrum. A pattern made of suffering, and something that he had never seen outside of tromblr aesthetic feeds.

His thorax was bulging. The capacity of his material-sac had been tested, proven, then exceeded. After the Highblood’s release he had held on for a breathless stretch of minutes before the muscles inside of him failed in a quiver that mimed an orgasm without any of the satisfaction.

The hand lighting on his throat set all of his ‘fuck-or-die’ alarms clamoring. Pain, pleasure, hormones and fear combined to make the moment they shared into something almost religious. Not in a way that granted clarity-- rather than a sense of euphoria. He was perfectly aware of every part of his body. The stretch of his nook the kink in his back from being hauled at a strange angle. The tension of the skin on his throat, stretched under the pressure of the claws resting against it.

It would be different if his partner were a troll constrained by fear of repercussions. Had the huge, chilly body beneath his also existed in the same mind-numbing terror of consequence that his cohort did it would almost be all right. The legs that splayed him open like a living bridge served as literal pillars of the establishment that brought them to this moment. The only thing the Highblood feared was boredom. There was a possibility that he feared the Condescension too, but Karkat was not wholly convinced of that. Not even death made the list, neither did rules or laws. The Highblood was beholden to none of these things.

The lips of his nook were stretched so tight around the bulge spearing him that they felt transparent. If someone had asked for a diagram of the scene he would simply draw a red squiggle to indicate his body, and rip a bulge-shaped hole in the paper with indigo tinted edges and call it good.

“What is it little beast? I AIN’T THE SORT TO SIT IN SILENCE WITH MY GARMENTS AROUND MY MOTHERFUCKING WALKSTUB JOINTERY.”

Karkat twitched, the muscles along his back locking up. The Highblood moaned -- a breezy, rasping sound along his shoulder. Karkat could still feel the foreign topography of the troll’s mouth against his - little raised surfaces along the peaks of his lips and dotting the skin just before the dip of his chin. The possibility existed that he chewed on them.  Maybe he and Gamzee shared a trait. Quick as the thought came, Karkat shoved it away -- rejecting the tangle of feelings at the thought of his ex.

Signless burning and screaming. His hips were starting to cramp. The Highblood’s bulge was beyond anything that his body might have ever been prepared for -- what natural lubrication it offered had been spread thin on the very tip of the offending appendage and spent not even a quarter through its entry.

Whether it was his blood or slurry on the floor it was difficult to say. Both retained a glossy sheen while still moist.

“Came.”

It was hard to speak clearly. His arms remained pinned behind him, exacerbating the arch in his back.

“We aim to please.”

The Highblood growled against his hair. One of his fangs brushed along his horns and he unsuccessfully tried to swallow a yelp. His body did not get the memo regarding not exhibiting signs of panic. His wail bounced off of the high walls of the room, his jaw aching from being held open earlier.

“AIM TO PLEASE EVEN IF THE TARGET IS FUCKING HERETICAL FILTH MOST FOUL.”

The Highblood’s bulge sheathed in, retreating from the clutch of Karkat’s body. It hauled a whimper from his throat. He was left bereft and relieved in tandem. Blood traced down his thighs-- thicker than the slurry prior.

“This way.”

Hauled upright and not allowed the dignity of walking, Karkat sat on the Highblood’s crooked elbow. If it were possible to plant an ass vindictively, that is how he did it. Idly he hoped that he would leave a bloodstain. The realization that the horrorterror might enjoy that caused a revocation of that desire.

As abruptly as he was taken in hand he was in turn deposited in the room he had woken in, thrown into a pile that caught him with a ‘whump’. His hips throbbed and his nook was a problem he was not prepared to face yet. Turning his face into the pile and growling he forced himself not to cry.  
He was alive. As long as he was alive there were options.

 

 

The trolls in charge of his care were faceless - in the sense that they all blurred together into a painted daymare montage of bodies. All of them appeared slathered in the greasepaint that Gamzee had insisted on piling onto the razor-planes of his face.

The clowns moved with speed and grace that he had not expected of trolls who were so large. Being surrounded by adults as a sub-adult himself was a daily exercise in subtle terror. With his ex-moirail as his sole point of comparison it was easy to assume that all clowns were slow and stuttering or insanely huge like the Highblood. Nothing about these trolls fit the image. Some seemed to be heavyset and hard like the terror, others were lithe and long. Muscles gleamed under tights and BDU both, sometimes overlaid in sparkles, mixed in with polkadots and accented in a myriad of incrementally different hues of indigo.

Looking at all of the bodies around him made his breath catch. He could not stop himself from imagining what it would be like to hook his ankles around the waist of one of the more slender ones, or feel himself crushed under the full weight of one of the heavier ones- nook stuffed full of their thick bulge and his own caught in one of their rough hands.

The DT on duty for the evening had a rubber nose. It took every ounce of self-control that he possessed not to swat the stupid thing off of her face. For all he knew it could be covering an exposed olfactory divot, or maybe her sniff bulb had been broken one time too many. Regardless of the cause, the object of his irritation was too close to his nethers.

“It hasn’t closed out of protest and nothing has fallen off. You can get away from my bone bulge. This exact second would be an ideal time to do just that.”

Answered with a snort and a sharp jab to the muscle of his thigh Karkat groaned in long suffering frustration.

“What is it with you circus folk and jabbing me?! If those are supplement, let me inform you that my oral cavities are highly functional! You could make a compelling argument for being ready and willing! Look at me using my gasp-tube even now!”

Instead of having him swallow medication everything he was given came in the form of injection. Food was the only thing that he had been allowed to voluntarily ingest.

The DT arched a festively-adorned eyebrow at him, rhinestones glittering along its curve. Reaching up she lightly pressed a forefinger over his mouth in a lewd imitation of a pap. Hissing at her he nipped the finger on his mouth, prompting a smile and a gentle flick to the chin on the part of the DT. The finger returned once more.

“Are you mute or just contrary?”

Growling around the digit, he jerked his head back so that her clawtip was not digging into the meat of his lip. Feeling vindictive he rested his foot against the bulk of her shoulder, the ball of his heel pressed under her clavicle. She did not seem to mind being used as a footrest so he left it there.

If she stayed down there much longer things might take a turn for the unpleasant. He was here for what he gathered to be a specific purpose. Any interruption would mean his participation was no longer desired. However if he were honest, he would not mind having her face pressed into his lap, grinding slowly against the mild temperature of her lips.

Logically he did not want to mate with every mature troll that he came into contact with.  His body did not seem to have a firm grasp on logic. Instead it persisted in sending subtle hormonal cues to every sexually mature troll in a close radius that he was open and ready for business. Having a potential partner within holding distance instilled a subtle excitement in him. She was not one of the oldest that he had encountered, his legs would probably fit around her waist rather than jutting comically to either side.  He was simultaneously ready to aggress and haul her against him while chittering like a slut.

She finished her examination, papped his butt once and left him to his pile and to stew. The timing between visits by the Highblood was not yet predictable. With no chronometer to pass the time and nothing else to do with himself he had thus far spent his time on the subjugulator ship mapping patterns out of the blood stains on the walls and sleeping. It was infuriatingly boring and he hated it.

Laying back in the pile he gingerly closed his legs, tucking them toward his thorax and thinking.

The only business that logical-Karkat wanted to participate in was getting the hell off of The Cosmic Joke. It was an unlikely plan given that oviparous trolls were rare. Rarer than the mutation that he was sporting. Rarer than those carrying the winged gene. There were a fractional percentage of those carrying the oviparous gene in the seadweller population and he was a fraction of that fraction. One clusterfuck of statistical improbability, it was him.

Off-spectrum and fully functional on neither land nor sea thanks to demi-gills that did not connect to a fully formed aqueous vascular system, his main biological purpose seemed to be his capability to brood. This genetic novelty he supposed was the reason that the drones had not culled him nor ever shown a tendency toward aggression.

The first time he met one prior to collection season he nearly shit himself. Two more had joined the pair he initially encountered. The stood in a buzzing circle, the moons glittering off of their faceted eyes. The encounter left him alive against everything that he understood to be true. His visitors instead had passed on to reign terror over those proximal to his hivestem. Their screams had floated over the lawnring until crabdad had closed the viewing plane. Given the temperament of said neighbors he did not count it as a loss.

Two subsequent visits brought the realization that they would be a regular occurrence in his life. On particularly intrepid drone with a crooked wing brought him a troll. The green stared at him, half dressed and quaking in equal parts of terror and confusion. Prodding at the drone got it to release the stranger. To his enduring mortification it produced a bucket. The careful application of a broom and choice vocabulary caused the drone to retreat from his hive, buzzing with what he could assume was displeasure. The stranger was smart enough to make a break for it during the exchange.

That incident earned a consultation with Kanaya and her lusus. The results did not prove heartening. It had been her opinion at the time that he was carrying the mutation for egg-production and the drones in turn reacted to pheromone cues given by his maturing body. The advice seemed to be correct. The drones began bringing gifts -- dead naturae, filled buckets and soft materials. All of the crap had been promptly disposed off. If he could have figured out how to ask for specific items it might have been useful. Instead it was just one more source of mortification in the jumble that was his life.

Burrowing into the pile materials he surrendered himself to the drug-induced drowsiness. Exhaustion won over irritation for the moment, and there was more than enough time to plan when he woke.

An instrumental break from one of the classic hymns brought him back to consciousness.

“Anaconda don’t want none unless you got buns hon...”

Muttering under his breath Karkat pushed up and out of the pile. Wakeup tones tended to proceed visits from tall, huge and bushy-maned.

It was a good thing that the stare-and-jab with the DT had not devolved into a quickie in the pile. Being close to adults shifted his thoughts into fuzzy concepts. It was not like when he was younger. Instead of having to deal with a little extra lubrication from time to time, being surrounded by potential partners had turned his nook into a flood. His body was an ocean that any troll could dive into if they were brave enough. His bulge hid and rampaged with no differentiating cues. As with most things involving pailing Karkat had initially blamed hormones.

Now that they seemed to be sending his libido into overdrive he just blamed the ridiculous DTs.

When he soaked through all layers of clothing and his bulge fought the inner seams of his pants, he curled into the pile and clamped his thighs shut. He bit the docterrorists that had administered his initial hormone-boosting shots. When the Highblood came for him the first time he scratched and clawed. Attempts to kick had been akin to kicking a building; it accomplished nothing and hurt his knees. Trying to claw the Highblood was like a meowbeast unsheathing its claws against a leviathan.

He tried.

Fighting against the situation had been his first instinct. Even against iron-strong holds and crushing weight he pressed back. The thought of death was a friend that had accompanied him from the first time he had dragged his sorry carapace out of the caverns. Considering it in his present situation was not a reason to hold back. No matter how fucking pointless, how little it mattered, he had to fight.

Each protest lost some volatility.

Each orgasm shook him harder.

In his more lucid moments he wondered if they were training his body to do things that it always had wanted to and his pan was simply slow to catch up. Certainly the ease at which he opened to the cool, thick bulges in him argued the case. The stress and fear began to plateau. As long as he was wanted then they could not hurt him. Instead of shivering in mortal terror, he spaced out during mediocre attempts and engaged with more skillful individuals.

Satisfaction mixed with disgust. When he was not thinking about it, the feeling of being full to leaking gave him a pleasure that was disturbing. Nothing compared to the moment that he relaxed and his gene-bladder pressed taut against his skin. The delight of good food, of safety and cohort all dimmed in the release granted by thorough pailing followed by a deposition of slurry.

If this were before, had he been anywhere else, he would have been appalled at himself.

When he could find the energy he was, but the concentration to maintain that came and went.

Most vexatious was the care with which he was treated. Everything that he had been told of adulthood, things that involved the Highblood, and the fleet, all shared the common element of ending with pain or death. Few instances of deviation existed in the population as urban legends or entertainment-vid stars. Once their novelty wore off those trolls tended to disappear. There were zero instances of deviation to the pain and death rule for those with his mutation. All of his understanding had been subverted.

He sat unscathed in the admin-hub of the subjuggulator operations network. Instead of hiding in storm-drains and praying fervently to whatever was listening that his neighbors not see the bloody gash running down his leg, he ate regularly, was given spectacular medical care and had a safe place to sleep. Were it not for the intermediate instances of rape it could arguably be a decent life.

Behaving led to better results than fighting. Having his claws filed down to the quick cured him of scratching at most of his captors. The DT that did it shared a horn shape with the DT sporting the rubber nose. Laying on his back while one of the orderlies spilled himself into him from behind he had found himself wondering if they shared an ancestor or came from the same brooding planet. If he saw the filer again he was going to extract retribution. She had been looking at his mouth speculatively and he was not above biting a bulge-tip off.

Getting out of the set of slacks he had been sleeping in and stretching himself out, he looked down the line of his body. His thorax remained soft but otherwise flat. A few pale marks arced up from his hips, a subtle reminder. Resting a hand over it he worked his fangs into his lower lip.

The first clutch had been a failure.

Blood replaced the lubrication that he was used to. Having become accustomed to existing in a state of damp, the only thing alerting him to the difference had been the searching cramps that doubled him over. He had been tearing and no one seemed particularly concerned about that fact. He spent that evening grub-curled under his pile to muffle the sounds of his screams.

The cramps eventually quieted. The pile was taken away. He was bathed and put in a heated nest and settled throax-down. Painkillers stole his sense of time and day-terrors further distorted it.  
Taking his hand from his middle and tugging his sweater down he purposefully dressed. The leggings made tacky by all of the extra secretions were thrown in the corner to be dealt with later. Properly covered and feeling more himself he sat against the wall, waiting for his host and warden.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

When the Highblood arrived the doors slid open with carefully-maintained precision. That functionality stood in conflict with everything else that Karkat observed. To the faygo-pong tournaments to the box and string-light monuments lining the halls he expected the vessel to be a free-for-all. It had the appearance of half-feral anarchy and hid functional truth beneath all of the pandemonium.

The tiles beneath him shivered as the the other troll’s boots came to a rest in front of him. The Highblood clicked his tongue at him, expecting an expedient response. Karkat stood from his resting spot warily, staring up the neck-breaking span of body and horns to the disapproving face aimed down at him. “So is it time for a booty-call?”

Arching eyebrows at the GHB he could not summon the fear should feel. Idly he wondered if this is how the Signless had felt when looking at him. What he saw was a huge, very old troll. No more a monster than anything out of wiggler-tales. Generations separated them like a chasm. That could change with the application of chucklevoodoo. Gamzee’s had been enough to instill secondhand paranoia and vertigo when he was not the intended target. Getting the full treatment from the monolith before him was not on the active to-do list. The name kept flitting through his mind. Gamzee was a boy he half-remembered, a wraith from the shore with horns like curling spires and a smile half-empty and full of knives. 

Instead of being spilled onto his back and splayed with heels aimed at the ceiling, he was instead tucked up onto a shoulder and taken to parts of the ship unknown. Hooking his arm along the inward curve of the Highblood’s horn he adjusted his weight against the priest's neck. The tendons pressed against his hip tight as the biowire lining the walls of the craft. Sitting up high on the Highblood’s shoulder was disorienting and degrading. Though he was approximately the size of one of the cheaper Alternian scuttlebuggies Karkat had seen at home the troll moved with improbable quiet. Nothing rustled nor jingled, unlike the highly decorated soldiers that filled Karkat’s world. The beat of the troll’s bloodpusher tapped away against his hip, running in counterpoint to the tempo of the steps rocking him to and fro. Clinging to the horn closest like a tender grub freshly victorious from the caverns, he made faces at passing soldiers, daring them to say anything. The Highblood wrapped a hand around his calf, squeezing in a way that read both warning and fond. The pressure around the muscle made his eyes prick with tears. He took the fact that he did not whimper as a personal accomplishment.

If they had not confiscated his modus immediately after arrival he would have gladly taken a sickle and ended the whole farce. If the myth that clowns were immortal proved true, then he would have turned the blade on himself assured that it was better than the alternative. Sadly, neither option stood open to him any longer and demeaning shoulder-rides took their place.

“Thinking about killing little bucket?”

Karkat snorted. “Maybe you’re confusing your jumble of neural-firings with outside stimulus. I thought I was just a slave. We don't have thoughts you know.”

The Highblood honked. “You’re thinking about blood. It’s in in your nature.”

In no universe did the troll hauling him along like a sack of tubers or a play object understand how often he thought about blood. It was not something that required comment. “Are you going to finally tell me what the fuck this is all for? I know that you have a secret mutant fetish and now your everlong life is fucking complete, but it is nice to tell your sex slaves about their expected duties.” Pricking a claw into the Highblood’s horn did not reward him with a reaction.

“Bet you’d like it were that the state of things, tidbit.” When he answered, the Highblood’s voice was softer than his normal growl, laced with pleasure and amusement. “You seem to enjoy it well enough when I’ve got you ass up and am root deep. Surprise is part of the fucking way here. Adapt or don’t.”

Karkat felt the flush creeping up his neck and ground his fangs together to keep from scratching. The chucklefuck got a rise out of riling him up and distracting from any question that he could get out before having his mouth stuffed full of something, be it fronds, bulges or his own shirt. It was frustrating butting up against a troll who would not allow him nook-deep into their personal life.

Being alive would help him formulate a plan. This was the story that he told himself to combat the leering sense of despair that waited in the wings of his mind. If this were a Trolliwood blockbuster, someone would turn to him or happenstance would award him crucial information in regard to the situation and he would sneak through some weird back part of the ship to escape and live as a mercenary where the hemospectrum did not matter.

This was nothing like the cinema and he knew it. Something would shift in his fatcor eventually or he would stay here until he died. Miracles seemed more likely. If there were any place that such things might occur, it would be in clown-hell.

Instead of pushing further Karkat settled, hoping that his silence would allow for the highblood to wax poetic. Four more block markers passed with footsteps and ambient hall-noise providing the soundtrack. “Seriously though.”

“Seriously I bet you’d like to know.” The Highblood tapped in a code on an encrypted set of doors. The keypad curved inward, stained and dented. Nipping a thumb he swiped a bead of blood over the sensor. The doors slid open in a rush as the pressure equalized. “Know this. I am the Fury and I am not fulfilled. Your loathsome carcass exists to fix a mistake. Frowning and Smiling are two sides of the same fuckin caegar. Fury brings the Mirth. Levity is joined by Cacophony tight as clade. That’s church. You took something from me and you are going to give it right the fuck back.”

Dropped on a table while the Highblood went to a corner of the room to rattle around, he stared at the meticulously maintained armor worn even in the ship. There was a corpse-full of stains on the thing, but no holes or areas of opportunity presented themselves. It was flex-form padding, spikes and a material that seemed to have a similar stretch to the pilot's contact suits. From what he understood of their uniforms it allowed for broader psi-broadcasting, filament-wires acting to further transmit energy.

Turning, the Highblood leaned on a counter sized to him, at a distance looking like a regular troll. His eyes narrowed to crescent slits, dazzlingly contrasted against the deep black of his skin. “Shit reoccurs for a reason. I burned you, wiggler. You screamed and struggled. I watched until you stopped coughing and twitching and they cut your ass off the pole.” The resemblance to a normal troll dropped away again, fallen like an inexperienced wiggler from a precipice. 

Karkat did not bunch up even though he wanted to. From the time that he was little he sometimes had dayterrors of a calibre outside of the pirated psych-texts he had been given by Sollux. He could remember the feeling of his back arched at an angle that made it so hard to breathe. He could feel the friction burns against his wrists from dangling by a fixed point. Sometimes in the dreams he stood outside of himself, watching a man who could have been his hatch-clone dangling, carapace blistering and bubbling in the brutal Alternian sun as his fluids soaked into the earth below.

He remembered having ‘hivestem discussions’ and the frustration of never being taken seriously.

He remembered a life that was so gentle that he woke from those times clawing in frustration.

Kankri was the boy who was too fucking earnest and who physically seemed unable to quit when he wanted something. Kankri could never have done the things that the Signless had been purported to have done. The things that he had done. He was a different instance of specific traits. Beforus was the soft place made of veiling smiles and highbloods who masked their power with words. All of the tenacity that this boy shared with the man who had run and fought and effected change simply caused him to be an obnoxious prick. He would have died on Alternia in moments. The Highblood’s name in this place was Kurloz. And he was a slender, strange boy with a puff of hair and cold eyes to match his aloof demeanor.

Karkat had been tempted to use this dream name. To see if it really was just a mash of reading and his own imagination. The desire to keep living outstripped his curiosity.

The Highblood stared into him like he was assessing the composition of his internal organs and the build of his calcified structures. “You are a redundancy. You are a gateway made of charred timbers and other detritus. From you I get back what is mine.”

Clown bullshit. If he had paid more attention to Gamzee’s fake-ass clown religion then maybe something about all of this would make more sense. As it was, the moment had all of the trappings of a Faygo-induced rant. The room was tall enough to accommodate the stretch of the Highblood’s full height. Murals painstakingly detailed the stretches of the walls. Karkat looked around the faces in agony, bodies posed in various states of violence and abstraction. A shit-ton of trolls had died for the pigment on the walls. It made a small part of him howl in fury while the rest of him was flooded by the sense of waste. Scuttlebutt around the halls had informed him that the Highblood only worked from fresh corpses. Apparently the pigment was the truest from those who were freshly murdered. If he thought about it too hard the shadows resembled piles.

“You like the work?”

Karkat licked his fangs. “I was thinking about the fact that you are a corpse-factory. I don’t have an opinion of the ‘art’.” Growling laughter bubbled out beneath him.

“You flirting pitch, wiggler?”

“I’m not flirting at all. Just stating what any sane individual with functional vision-spheres could, if they weren’t struck silent in existential dread. You are a disgusting conglomeration of creaking bones and greasepaint and three times my body weight. If I were attempting to find someone to fight, it would not be you.” Karkat landed on the floor, air fleeing from his chest and stars flashing over his vision. The Highblood loomed, face obscured by the overhead lighting, fronds curled into loose fists.

“You know I ain’t gotta act sweet to get what I want from you.”

Karkat tried and failed to speak without a tremor in his voice. “My body needs to be in one piece though.”  He hoped. Gods left far away from him, he hoped so.

“Your mind does not need to be in a linear state.” The Highblood crooned it out at him as he crouched down over him. Karkat felt his nook tighten in anticipation. Sliding his knees open without thinking too much, he dipped his head back in a submission gesture. The Highblood sneered, brushing a hand down the line of Karkat’s thorax and working his fingers under the lip of his pants.

“Could voodoo you into a gibbering, simple mess. All those words that you are so INCREDIBLY COVETOUS OF? The ones that YOU THINK YOU CAN WIELD WITH SOME EFFECT? Like they are weapons that you are TOO INCREDIBLY INSIGNIFICANT TO HOLD? WIGGLER I WILL TAKE THEM FROM YOU. I WILL TURN YOU INTO NOTHING MORE THAN AN ORGANIC CAVERN TO BROOD MY DESIRES.” As his claws slipped past the lips of his nook, Karkat shivered. Anticipation curled through his body. When a second finger joined the first and hooked up in a careful brushing gesture, Karkat screamed.  Snapping his head back against the surface below him, he pressed down to get more volume and bring the Highblood’s hand inside of him.

The troll laughed, curving his fingers in slow, maddening motions as Karkat rocked his hips against his palm. Hooking his own slowly regrowing claws into the divots of the tiles, he tried something different. If he could find leverage he could find a little control. Fingers retracted with moist whisper and he whimpered, pressing up after the lost contact.

“No. Please.”

“PLEASE what?”

“Back inside of me. I want you back inside of me.” Blood pounded against his temples, his pusher galloping. The Highblood’s clothing rustled as he shifted his pants to allow for the emergence of his bulge. The base seemed thicker than usual and for all that it was frightening, lubrication streaked along his thighs and dribbled along the slit of his nook. Want of it filled his mind like a chant, hammering along in time with his pusher. 

“Fingers? Biowire? Gumigrubs? What is it of mine that you want heretic?” The Highblood purred at him, leering in the forest of his hair.

“YOUR BULGE!” Karkat screamed in the Highblood’s face, throwing his arms up to yank at his tunic, dragging at him as if it would have an effect. The cloth gave, ripping as the laughter above continued.

The Highblood’s bulge felt like everything. All of his attention slipped to the pressure sliding in between his legs, how it felt so good. It felt right. Then there was the want of more after the initial press. Adjusting against the muscled-stretch of thorax blanketing him he chittered in delight. Spreading his thighs wider and wiggling around he felt the tip of the bulge inside of him find the space it was questing for. It brushed along his seedflap and pressed, pulsing in slow flicks. Working his hips in counterpoint he crooned, flexing his claws along the Highblood’s sides. His captor liked it when he was noisy. Either he was purring or he was screaming and there was very little in between. If there was one thing he was good at, it was using his voice. When it felt good like this it did not aggravate him as much. He would probably throw up later, he might hate himself more later; but it felt good now.

Though he had been irritating and their pailing had seemed like it was heading pitch; instead the Highblood moved in methodical curls. His bulge crowded in and pulsed, brushing and teasing along his seedflap and pressing it open. Karkat jammed his head back against the flooring, whining in a long exhalation of joy. "More. Moremore." Purring at him he wiggled flush to the Highblood's hips, feeling his bulge drag and slip along his thorax. The base of the Highblood was definitely thicker than normal. The girth stretched at his nook and made it burn to accommodate it - but the width shifted. Above him, the Highblood crooned, head curved down over him and his hair blanketing to the pair of them. His thorax tightened and Karkat felt pressure unlike anything before nudging at him. It felt like something passed an apex that he had been unaware of. Everything felt full and he moaned through the duration of the feeling. It came again, and again. The Highblood twitched his hips in strange little bursts, rather than letting his bulge do the work like it ought to. The pressure inside of Karkat equalized into something near the post-ograsmic contentment he felt at a full gene-bladder.

Petting his thorax where he could see the Highblood's bulge jutting against his skin, he pinched at it. The curve of him slowly retreated and Karkat bathed in the combination of fuck-drunk and spinning in his head. There was nothing in this moment that he could control or do. He was not bleeding. This was okay. Slurry dribbled and dripped down from his nook, the mixture of their leavings coating his thighs and his glutes. Above him the Highblood seemed meditative, resting on his forearms and checking a text on his palmhusk -- closer in size to a tablet for his unnervingly large hands. 

Next time.

Next time he would not like it.

Next time he would find out what the fuck the Highblood wanted.

Next time he would find a way to leave.

*

“I always knew that you were kind of freaky in the sack dude. This doesn’t seem to be romantic though. You’re a tender sort of guy. Nothing tender going on here. Is all of Alternian behavior batshit violent and insane?”

Karkat tasted burning metal on the back of his tongue. Rolling deeper into the pile he whined softly, feeling the stretch in his pulled muscles and the ache of his head. Everything was a nova of burning. None of it was good. The voice persisted at the edge of his pile. For once the temperature of the block was decent, not chilly and painful. Instead the room had a warm tint. Touching the closed lids of his eyes demonstrated he was not feverish. Slitting them open he found a creature that was heartbreakingly familiar and incredibly foreign.

He supposed it was another male - it possessed a smaller stature and no rumblespheres. Its musculature was not as developed either. Not nearly fierce enough to be a female. He was hornless, dizzyingly strange with skin a warm tone similar to rustbloods, dotted with little black specks. Adorned in a red similar to Karkat’s heretic shade, the male tilted his head and presumably was staring at him. His eyes were covered by sun-planes so Karkat could not be sure, but it was a safe bet. Looking at him made him want to cry and purr at once. Seeing him reminded him of the slow and consistent tick of a chronometer while laying in the moonlight. It was a safe feeling. Left with such an overwhelming impression of familiarity Karkat was doubly bewildered. Apparently this being thought that he knew him.

“Shut your face hole. I have no idea who you are. Or what you are.” He was lying-his scrambled pan argued with him on this issue. Broken swords, long and echoing hallways. Conversations in the everdark of the labs. He knew this boy. Knew that he was a boy. Knew a word that he had not used in that context. Karkat scrunched his eyes closed and rolled onto his side, facing the wall and avoiding his delusion. The only trolls that would be coming to see him were med-staff or figments. In a place as psychically charged as the ship it was not surprising that he would be seeing things. Perhaps he was seeing ghosts. That was something that Aradia had been able to do and the two of them were somewhat similar in shade if one squinted.

There was the possibility that aliens had died on the ship too. Maybe alien ghosts were visiting him. More likely he was hallucinating. The boy in front of him made him feel so warm, looking at him wrapped Karkat in the scent of bonfires on the cold coast and reminded him of things that always were and would be. It was fitting that he would be dreaming of gods.

He was losing his mind.

There was that option, but it felt a little early. If he could survive his whole  adolescence on mostly power naps and fear, he would not be taken down by clown mojo. Rolling back over he looked at the boy who was now sitting near his pile. His pusher clenched in desperate affection. It was worse in some ways than his intermittently broken ribs. Definitely worse than being thrown around like a discarded comfort-object. Not quite as bad as concussions. Nothing about the restive alien-brown face with the little sun-dots made him nauseous.

“I lied. Don’t shut your face-hole at all. Talk to me. Tell me a story.” Karkat rolled toward the boy, knees pressed up as tight as he could make them against his thorax.

Resting his chin in a pink palm, the boy offered him a crooked smile. He then proceeded to lean forward and brush his lips along Karkat’s forehead in something that was so pale that it was scandalous. “Don’t have a lot to say in this instance. I just miss you. I miss your stupid face. And I’m irritated that I can’t stay with you.”

Deadpan was his thing when he was not frantically rambling. Memories piled on top of one-another: _Dave_ ( _his name was_ **DAVE** ) talking on the edge of one of the roofs, face locked down tighter than a politician’s, Dave staring intently at the wall while he talked about his ‘brother’. Dave. Dave with little visible emotion meant that he had far too much of it and he was desperately trying to cram it away before it could be weaponized.

Karkat felt so furious at their separation. Frustration closed his throat tight and pricked at the corners of his eyes. “You’re pretty fucking smart.”

He was. Karkat could not question his sudden confidence on the subject. Some things he just knew and those feelings had kept him alive before. “I’m sure you could figure out something.” Terrifying and dangerous as this situation was he was not going to cry in front of a semi-stranger. He would not beg for help. This boy had a martyr-complex and did not belong anywhere near the Grand Highblood. It would be so nice though, to have someone to help break the silence. If this boy was a ghost or a god then maybe Karkat could keep him to himself.

“Don’t know about that. But I’ll tell you as soon as I figure something out.” Dave paused, glancing behind him. “We’re going to have company. Sit tight sugar-pants. We’ll do something for you.”

Karkat felt lost at the concept that there were others who would help him. Perhaps his alien-ghost-friend had met others in his cohort. He seemed the sort that Aradia might get along with. Returning his attention to Karkat Dave poked him on the nose, focusing his attention.

“Ask her for a tablet. Not immediately. But you’ll know when. You’re better with people than you realize.” Darting forward Dave stole a kiss, mouth soft and fangless and brilliantly warm against Karkat’s.

Opening his eyes after the contact was broken afforded him the same view that he had come to expect. The door slid open to reveal one of his med-staff. Karkat dropped his head into his folded arms and signed. DT with the nose again.

Standing up so that she would not have an excuse to come and loom over him like most of the adults did, he met her halfway with one of the sheets from his pile wrapped around his shoulders.

“More hormones? Or maybe this time just to freshen it up, a couple of bio-stitches to the danger-cave?”

He felt unsteady on his feet and dizzy. It was a terrible descriptor for his nook that Dave had purred against his aural. That was just prior to receiving a kick to the chest and banishment from the platform.

The DT, who Karkat had assumed incapable of emoting, offered the first smile he had seen on her face.

“More hormones. Always. Blood-test first then adjusted meds depending on the outcome.”

She waggled her sparkle-brows at him. “I will suture your danger-cavern any time. You really ripped up this time or just sore?”

The rhinestones were different colored this time around and the nose was slightly firmer looking. Perhaps she had a moirail somewhere on the ship that she was representing.

“Real fucking - HAH, not actually intended to be a joke - sore.”

Karkat shuffled slightly from foot to foot, trying to distract himself from the throbbing in his head.

“Little intermittent bleeding. It’s making pants really gross.

Staring down at the leggings he had gotten from the wardrobifier he was reminded of the Beforun boy. The things were stupid and reminded him too much of his dreams; however, they stretched over his thorax and did not chafe his nook. They also had enough stretch to allow his bulge to thrash and coil without chancing a rash from seams.

Being wet at all points of his wake cycles made wearing undergarments pointless. It was one less layer to deal with and launder. It also was one less thing for the Highblood to claw off of him when he got in a mood.

“While you’re doing that could you scan and see if I’m concussed?”

The sheer volume of intrusive thoughts he was experience argued the case for one.

“I was dropped from a middling height directly onto my pan.”

It was a gamble, asking for help. None of the clowns on this ship had any reason to do so.

“You’re up, speaking full sentences and you’re not heaving everywhere so I don’t think you got one.  But I can give you something for the discomfort.”

The DT pulled a bag out into view, thumping it onto the ground. Glancing into it Karkat could see the flashing of a modus.

“So uh, did you always want to be in the mediculling profession?”

The DT hummed noncommittally.

“we do what we end up doing, don’t we? Ain’t any sort of choice to it.”

He disagreed. Comparatively she had a galaxy of options.

“Stand still. Gonna scan for fractures n’ other maleficence.”

The want passed over his face and neck. Along the inner rim several species of sensing grub hummed and pulsed. They all seemed in working order and shone dimly as they passed by his occulars. The wand was tucked back into the case at her side and she turned to gather her tablet, scanning down the results that popped up.

Meeting his curious stare she gestured at his back.

“You’ve got some compaction near your upper vertebrae. Got a thick skull, your pan’s just fine.”

Resting a fore-claw against his neck lightly she pressed down. Hissing and stepping forward in instinctual discomfort he nodded. Maybe the aching tenderness of his neck was also the reason that his fingertips had been tingly after the last round of serving as the Highblood’s personal bucket.

“Gonna put a little healing-accelerant on your neck. Also putting you in a med-collar. It’s not locked or nothing. Just gonna keep your neck straight while you rest so you don’t thrash and paralyze yourself. You dig?”

He dug. The only other option was to assume that he was going to participate in medical-torture pailing. Nothing of the sort took place. His DT slathered a cool blob of gel onto his neck and slowly massaged it in. The sensation went from cold and slimy to numb and tingly.

Pulling the padded collar out of her bag she went about adjusting it for his smaller neck. Only when she fastened it around his throat did the fear come. Claustrophobia made his heart race and his claws were scrabbling along the exterior of the collar before he could stop himself.

Giving him a look, the DT took her hands away.

“You ain’t gotta wear it if you’re going to get all scared. But I’m telling you it’d probably be best if you left that shit on for a night or two till that gel I put on you gets to work. If His Levity gonna be throwing you around, he’s gotta remember that you ain’t gonna heal like a highblood.”

There was wisdom in her words though he bristled at the implication that he was anything less than a shit-brick house. If the rot-panned spectre could dish it out, he could take it.

“You got a name Doc?”

Time to gamble. Docterrorists in the fleet were notoriously mercurial. Some of them would only help if you were cohort. Others accepted bribes but all he had to offer she did not seem interested in. There were a few that did their jobs for fear of culling, but that situation did not seem to apply either. That left the unlikely option that she was one of the ones that had a clinical disposition.

“Doc serves as well as anything else. Why you wanna know?”

He looked up at her.

“Because you’re the only person on this ship that has treated me with competence and without trying to shove yourself into me. I like it.”

She might have a title, but given the rank visible on her shoulder it was unlikely. Soldier was probably her category with a specialization under that.

Returning his stare for a long moment her mouth parted into a grin. It was a slow and gap-fanged expression. Three of her major front fangs were absent and it looked as if her palate had been destroyed and then poorly reconstructed. It was no wonder that she had as taciturn an affect as she normally did. It also explained the lisp he had made earlier note of.

“It’s Aislyn. Don’t fucking use that shit around others or I’ll make you pay for it.”

It reminded him of Sollux from the hissing to the inflated sense of solemnity juxtaposed against asinine shit. Biting down on the corner of his lip he succeeded in not grinning. She took a knee next to him, looking into his face.

“What you want to be addressed as? His Levity’s got a trove of insults. You got a favorite?”

Pulling his sheet more comfortably around his shoulders he shrugged.

“You could just try my name. It’s shorter. I’m Karkat. Karkat Vantas.”

“Vantas. Right.” She reached across, resting clawtips on the collar and making minute adjustments. Muttering to herself quietly she pulled her tablet over and tapped a few notes onto the glowing surface.

“No more hormones tonight. Don’t think so. You need sleep. Get a sopor patch on and try to set up your pile so you won’t roll as much. Told them you got a spinal injury going on and they gotta lay off you for a few days.”

Splaying her hand flat over the tablet she pressed her lips together in a thin line.

“You’re working on a clutch now. He’ll be happy about that.”

She did not seem to share the sentiment. He surely did not. Staring at his middle in vague horror he tried to imagine what the point was and the frustration boiled over.

“Can you tell me what the blistering hell this is all about? I’ve been laying around like the industry’s most undervalued black and red switch in the universe’s most horrible contract for a series of rape scenes loosely tied together and I have learned more about bulges in my short stay here than I ever possibly could have in my young adult life. Why? CAN YOU TELL ME WHY THIS IS ALL HAPPENING?!”

The longer he dwelled on it the higher the panic rose. The Doc was not impressed.

“Shoosh!”

Jamming himself backward in order to avoid the hand on his face that did not land brought Karkat briefly back into the present.

“It’s freaky as fuck little invertebrother. Not gonna lie. This is my job though. Gonna keep you whole n’ well and then I get to transfer off this ship and to the station my matespirit’s on.”

Karkat panted, his head back to throbbing.

“Would you be willing to do me a favor Aislyn?”

One of her eyes was clouded over. The sparkle-brows probably distracted patients and enemies from noting she was half-blind. 

“Depends. Probaby not. But depends. What you want?”

“You got an extra tablet I can read on?”

The pause stretched out so long that Karkat was assured of the no that would follow. Instead she reached back into the bag, producing a small one with a crack down the middle.

“Hide that shit. And if you get caught with it, tell them that the orderly with the crooked horn who’s been doing you in the chute was the one that gave it to you.”

He knew just the one.

“Shit’s broken and only works half the time, but it stays charged forever and you can play games on it. Careful of your fronds, crack will slice them open.”

She snapped her bag shut purposefully.

“See you soon, Vantas.”

The door closed behind her and Karkat sunk into his pile with exaggerated care. Even with the medication his neck was tight. The collar only mediated some of his discomfort. Hiding the tablet in the deepest part of his pile he rested his arm over his eyes and slept.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is actually a larger plot with this one going on. It's just taking a little while to get there. I'm trying a different plotting/writing style with this story. Keep an eye out for later iterations. I may be making some structural changes as an afterthought to bring in further background story elements. But mostly this is just an excuse to write porn. :D


	3. Chapter 3

Oral had never been something that he was inclined to ask for. Having someone face-first in the middle of his nook resulted in a scuttlebuggy crash of shame and despair. Pleasure suffered in those moments ejected through the front gale-plane and left bleeding on the ground. It meant that another troll had to see everything that was wrong with no possibility of avoiding the subject. It was like inviting the drones to him with a cavalier wave and a sign bearing directions. Still, the action itself was divine. A tickling brush of soft against the softest parts of him. Depending on the giver, the act was warm warding off the incessant cold around him. Pressure holding his legs open was reassuring rather than frightening. Letting fangs close to his thorax was a sign of love and no one could tell him otherwise.

What elevated oral to his favorite was the memory of Dave's blonde hair peeking over the horizon of his middle, voice muted into pleased hums and murmurs. Once in a while his human would press his tongue deep into his folds, in preparation to add a finger into the mix or simply to map the interior topography of his hidden spaces. Other times Dave concentrated solely on the sensitive parts they had discovered together, making Karkat keen and whine. The blazing warmth of Dave's mouth amplified everything and fixed his attention solely on the boy who had twisted his way into Karkat's grid and planted himself firmly on the heart.

No one before Dave had observed his nude form with such lust and appreciation. It was a fierce and disconcerting attention. Karkat both reveled in it and wanted to squirm away growling. Humans were too much. Too much in every respect – too much touching, too open, to free, too strange. They did not follow rules – not Dave, nor Rose, nor stupid John, or quizzical Jade. All of them looked at the rules, raised their middle frond digits to them and did whatever the fuck seemed best. It was the tenderness of those moments that stayed with him as well. Dave's fingers were warm and inquisitive, smoothing along the exterior of his thighs to duck in and trace along the tendon pressing against his skin along the inside. He was forever squeezing the meat of Karkat's ass. For all that he complained about it, the pressure was thrilling, making him want to wiggle into Dave's sword-roughened palms and chitter.

The texture of his matespirit's hands had been almost right to a troll's – with all of the sword wielding he had done his hands had more character than Rose's. There was not enough danger in Dave's blunt nails to even begin to threaten his skin so he made a game of seeing how hard he could get Dave to squeeze him. It was cute when the human attempted to threaten with them. For as asinine as Dave could be, he dealt with Karkat's self-depreciation with kisses and crazily meandering analogies. When they were naked together it was a safe sort of vulnerability.

Waking up warm and very slowly, Karkat smoothed a hand down his front. He had been dreaming. Dreaming of the sweetest pailing he had ever participated in and dreaming of another time. Pressing the pads of his fingers along the curve of his bone bulge he flicked a finger slowly over the slit- indecisive about wanting to touch himself or simply enjoy the quiet of wakefulness.He had always been a poor sleeper. This wake and rest cycle would be no different than the other ones back on Alternia. By his guess it was somewhere around mid-morning and most of the clowns would be passed out. Given that, there were a few hours before anyone came to prod at him. The GHB was the unknown variable in that assumption, as Karkat assumed he never slept. Certainly his schedule of visitation implied it. Every time that he tried the door of his room it remained stalwartly locked. Maybe this time would be different and the distraction of trying kept him from the reality pressing against his thoughts, carried over from the night prior. Dragging ass out of the pile, he wobbled as his feet met the chill tiling of his block. It was shock enough to bring him fully into the present.

Carrying a clutch. The DT said it, but the words did not penetrate. Pressing his palms against his thorax he felt the same soft give of tissue layered over hidden muscles. Nothing solid in there yet. Swallowing thick fear and a little bit of bile he pressed against the door sensor and got a negation-buzz. Of course it was still locked. Instead of shuffling back to the pile, he redirected into the closet of an ablution block. Leaving his soiled clothes in a heap he stood on tip-toes to get the water flowing. The temperature gauge on the tap did not go near close enough to warm for him. Tepid would do. The misters kicked to life, high above his head and dribbling a small cloud down toward him. Everything on this ship had been designed simply to spite him.

Shortly thereafter warm hands slid around his waist. Staring down at arms wrapped up in red knit fabric and entirely too small to belong to a troll, Karkat turned and flung his arms around Dave, growling in disbelief and adoration.

“You infernal vexation. You meandering, senseless, incorporeal, temporally challenged -asshole-.” Butting his forehead into Dave's shoulder Karkat clung. The pressure around his waist was real. Dave's nails gently pressed into his skin where his fingers curled. There would be bruises from his horns in his human's too-tender skin but none of it mattered. Fear caught up at the heels of his elation, snuffing out his joy. “You can't be here. They will pull you apart like a medical curiosity.”

“Dude. Chill. You are talking to the man that has been dissected, burnt, crushed, and died in so many other ways that I don't even want to fucking list them. Just chill. Find your zen or some shit. Be in this moment with me.”  Water traced along Dave's bangs and dripped down onto his glasses.

“Why the fuck are you wearing those -in the ablution trap- you disaster?” His voice came out as a tremulous whisper and not the scolding affection he was going for. Reaching up he slipped them free of Dave's face, pausing to visit kisses over his freckles. His pinkies brushed along the curve of his jaw and Karkat wanted to gather him up and hide him away like the treasure that he was. 

“So here's the thing, sultan of my heart and emperor of all that I adore. I can't stay here forever. But the good news is that you don't have to stay here forever, either.”

Hope, dangerous and flickering lit in his chest and lipped at the edges of his ribs, threatening to ignite him wholly.

“Bad news is that you're all tangled up in this.” Dave's voice grated in frustration. “Some shit is happening here that has to happen. No mater what I do I'm not going to be able to change the outcome. And the harder that I try the more I'm going to snarl the timeline.”

Karkat smoothed his hands along Dave's sides. “So what you're saying is that I have to be here.”

“Kinda. Yeah?” Dave looked away, fingers flexing against his back. "It's complicated." 

Karkat's vision flecked at the edges, high ringing sounding in his ears. The water, quietly moving through the pipes in the background started to sound like blood rushing through his ears, or too many voices overlapping all at once.

“-kat?”

The hands around his waist loosened.

The tiles caught his shoulders where his knees had failed.

Quiet snuffed his awareness and in the space trickled memories. 

His death had been unexpected. Pushed into burning stone. It had not counted as very heroic in his mind.  Flashes played behind his eyes -- Kanaya disappearing, Rose's terrified face, and the strobing fury in Gamzee's eyes. The flashes and tempo of LOPAH had woken him like the lingering effects of a fever he suffered in youth. Apparently someone had braved the burning silica to haul his blistered remains out and put it on a quest bed.The difficulty of all of it hurt his head – he was no time player to snarl infinite iterations of every action up. Nor was he a space player, able to be in many places simultaneously. His aspect always had led him back toward his friends and cohort. It led him to his humans and making a team out of the irreparable mess that they had fallen into.

Greasy hands and the rasp of his companion's breathing made it better. Resting his head over the slender length of his moirail's calf, Karkat drowsed. It was comfortable and dark like the labs.

"You. You fucked... it all up."

Cracked claws landed in his hair and scratched at the bases of his horns. Long hands with bony, slender fingers settled along the curves of his cheeks. The thumb with the broken claw that would never grow right traced the spot where all of the tension in his jaw gathered. Gamzee? Had he been the one that pulled him out of the lava? Why was here there? They had broken up by that time. One fight too many where he was screaming himself hoarse and hearing nothing in response. All of that energy and all of that effort paid to what essentially was a living wall.

 _“You're getting yourself all knotted up_.”

Jerking his head up, Rose sat across from him, leaning against the wall of the ship, artfully poised under a blood-splatter.

“You can't be here either! Even less than Dave can you be here. This fucking place, it'll screw with your head. It's screwing with my head already." Karkat twitched in his pile, damp and confused. There was a trail of water leading from the respite-block and a bunched up towel thrown off to one side. Presumably he had made his way back. 

“I am not here. No one else can see us.” Rose stood, flats passing silently over the tiles separating them.

“What the fuck does that mean?”

His human friend kneeled in front of him, arms folded on her knees. “I'm going to lay it out plain, just stop running your mouth for a second so I can do it.” Locking his jaw in indignation he waited for her.

“We don't technically exist in this world. Your species has not met humans yet. Even if they can see us, they would not know what they are looking at." Sweeps of watching Rose Lalonde talk herself into stupid decisions had him dubious, but it was painfully tempting simply to believe. 

"Your aspect makes you easy to find. You are ours so we know where to look. But there is something here that needs to be done.” Rose tilted her head, teeth resting against the bottom of her lip as she thought. They pressed the supple flesh around them, creating a little divot between the lipstick she wore and the red inside of her mouth. Perhaps it was all of the shots that made him want to investigate that skin with his teeth. “You are having concentration problems because Dave and some of the others are here trying to help. I would prefer it be some other way. I don't like the way that they are keeping you.”

Vaguely flipping a hand up at the high ceilings and the gore-splattered flexi-planes of the ship around him, Karkat managed a dry snort. “What, you mean that you don't find industrial horror to your taste? I would think that this is just the sort of situation that would set the eldritch-terror fetishist in you a-titter.”

Rose shook her head, smiling at his attempt. “Because I can come to you, game mechanics still apply. Dave's around the corner, keeping watch. Theoretically we won. And I think we got to keep our powers. Keep that in mind.” Her skirts swished along the tiles when she stood.

“I've got to go for now, but one of us will be along presently. We will figure this out. You're not alone.”

In between one blink and the next he was alone and Rose was a liar.

None of it sat straight in his mind.

*

Instead of being in his boring clean room, he was pinned under a rock. A huge, terrible rock, cool and implacable. He would never get this weight off of him. Even if he strained for the rest of his life. His chest and his hair were damp, everything felt squishy and unpleasant.

One sweep his roof had leaked and the drones had better things to do than come and find him. Rather than risk himself by calling on them he had spent a miserable and mortifying three weeks with buckets out in plain view to catch the water drizzling through his roof before it soaked into the carpet. This felt like that – being waterlogged and stuck. Neither condition was even roughly pleasant nor easily tolerable.

The confusion passed and light pressed in at the corner of his eyes. Maybe the sun above his unmoving rock was shifting and he would burn to death.

Instead, he found himself face-first in a medical nest. The reason that he felt like a rock was on him was because there was a fucking rock on him in the form of the Grand Highblood's hand. Jerking, he stared at the troll out of the corner of his eye.

“The fuck?”

The last thing that he remembered even vaguely was being in the irritatingly tepid spray of the ablution block. And Dave was the other thing that he remembered, warm hands wrapped around his waist and a discussion about time. It was possible Dave was not something that had been in the ablution block, though he dearly wished that he was.

His head throbbed, freshly offended after having been knocked around prior. Why was he in med? More pertinently why the fuck was the GHB with him in med?

“Indeed young heretic. The fuck? The fuck you doin' fallin' an trying to breathe water.” Claws flicked lightly along his neck, and Karkat shuddered, unable to hide the reflex. “Ain't like this shit functional. Nor that shit down there. I've put a bulb on your grubscars- I know what I observe.”

No, his fucking gills were not functional. They posed but one of a host of culling threats, gave him exquisite coughing spells, and the occasional bout of pneumonia. Like many things about himself, from his rounded horns to whatever his blood thought it was doing, his gills were completely pointless and acted instead as a threat to his continued living.

“Dunno. Think...I had a fit or something.” Careful application of the truth and sass. This would see him through these times. This was his hope.

“Ain't epileptic.”

“What now?” Karkat stared at the Highblood, perturbed by the even tempo of his speech and the general stillness of the man.

“Some shit the DTs have in their notes. They scanned your pan fucker, and it is right. Might be somethin' else, but ain't naught wrong with the container of your thoughs.”

Karkat took a slow breath through his nose. “Why do you have your hand on my back?”

The GHB leered above him. “I am so inclined.”

Hissing in frustration, Karkat turned his head, pile materials half blocking his view. “WHY?”

“Thought I saw some illegal wings sprout from your back like some sort of CAVALREAPER SON. YOU ARE A CONGLOMERATION OF IMPOSSIBLE AND OFFENSIVE THINGS. I FIND THAT SHIT CURIOUS.”

Karkat was saved from having to answer that sentiment by the nausea rolling through him. It blocked out any desire to argue and left him with a prickling sense of hot/cold physical dread. Vague notions about brooding and hormonal changes lurked at the edge of his mind without him putting full thought to them. As far as he understood these sorts of changes did not happen to Mother Grubs. Then again, he was no jade to have any concepts of what happened to Mother Grubs.

“Get... your hand off.”

Speaking carefully he tried to retain control of his breathing. Hilarious as the thought of heaving out the contents of his stomach onto the chief subjuggulator was, the thought of being smacked for it was not similarly appealing.

The weight retreated and he eased himself up. Sitting up he tucked one of the snuggle-planes from the edge of the nest around his shoulders, covering up. If the behemoth wanted to fuck right now he could sit on a culling fork and bounce a bit until he felt better.

“I'm not winged.”

Claws traced along his shoulders, two hot points slowly making their way down his back.

“We'll see pupa. About that and other things.”

*

No one warned him about how hungry he would get. So, incredibly hungry. The sort of hunger that would not answer to regular rations and demanded an impossible variety of tastes and flavors. If he were on homeworld it would have been hell. Shopping for regular trolls was hard enough, but for someone with his particularities it was an impossibility. Most of the protein cubes he ate as a wiggler were suspect as fuck and when he had been able to, he supplemented with whatever he could catch. Nepeta had always been better at that though. The thought of having fresh, slightly-too-raw from the fire meat made him groan.

Doc had been able to get him better fare than they had thrown at him earlier in his confinement. Between the lack of force-fucking and the decent food he could almost pretend that he was not a prisoner without any viable means of escape or clue what was going to happen to him.

When those thoughts hit, it either meant tears or frustration-shredding. They were the only two options that felt good, nothing else would do.

On top of the nook-flood and demi-constant wiggly, he was pretty much resigned to bodily hell. Munching his way through his sixth serving of crystallized beetles in a white sauce, he heard the door and did not deign to glance up. It would be one of three possibilities. Either he would see the GHB for another quizzical interaction, he would see the Doc, or maybe he would get a brain-ghost Dave. The brain-ghost-hallucination was the most hoped for option though he was game for the Doc too.

Option four leaned down with rumble-spheres in his face and a laughter-tinted voice in his aurals.

“Ka~rkat.”

Looking up through the curtains of dark hair and into the dancing eyes of yet another human, he smirked.

“Hey fuckass.”

Memories piled into each other, context not quite falling into place. He knew this girl, knew her stupid buck-fanged smile and the lilt of her voice.

“Ooooh. You remember me better than you do Dave or Rose. I'm telling.”

Leaning forward on her toes, Jade fell down to sit on her knees next to his pile. (Jade. Stupid, special, fantastic Jade. Inventor. Curious. Sometimes very sleepy. Soft ears, lonely like he was Jade.) Reaching forward she lightly rested a hand against his thorax, and it was not only a permissible touch but welcomed. Her warm-brown fingers felt soothing against the cold of the block.

Squinting into a middle distance, Jade considered him. “You're doing fine. So are they. That's good. There's some more things to be done, but I think it'll be okay.”

Jutting his chin up at her, he arched a brow. “It's good that you have some fucking clue what's going on right now, because I sure don't.”

“I think that's kinda how it has to go. Clowns have a bad habit of unearthing secrets. So if you don't know them then you can't be compelled to tell them, can you?”

“Point. Not one that I really like though.” Adjusting sideways, he settled into the pile and left some space, a silent invitation.

“Much as I would love to stay and talk comparative biology possibly with demonstrations, you get to hang out with the big man soon.” Jade rolled her eyes, lip curving up into an appreciable facsimile of a snarl. Karkat groaned.

“As the rest of you seem to have a much bigger grasp of what the fuck is going on with all of this, would you mind dropping a hint in my lap as to what the hell I am supposed to do with the daymare-master?” Other than gestating, and actively ignoring the fact that he was, Karkat had not made much headway on the Highblood situation.

Jade smoothed her hands along his thighs, cupping his knees and looking sympathetic. “I don't have the first clue. Other than survive. I never really interacted with Kurloz and I don't know how much of that personality carries over, anyway.”

“Well fuck.”

“You do, pretty often.”

“And you're watching?” His voice arched up just like his brows did, the thought both arousing and mortifying.

“Maybe.” Glancing over her shoulder, Jade made eye contact with someone and nodded. Following her line of sight, Dave stood in the doorway, casually leaning toward the direction that most of his company showed up from. Giving a little 'sup' head-bob, his lover returned his attention to Jade.

“We've gotta go. The party is coming.”

jade looked apologetically at him. “We would stay if we could. Hang in there.” Darting forward she pressed a rough kiss against his mouth, bonking foreheads softly before disappearing. He could feel pressure change at her leaving. Looking up at Dave he got a half-hearted smile.

“If I start kissing you now dude I won't be able to stop. I'll be back soon.” Dave offered a little wave then winked out. The doorway stood empty and the sound of chronometers ticking lingered in his mind.

Smoothing a hand along the jut of the eggs Karkat levered himself out of the pile. If he was going to be stuck here for the foreseeable future it would behoove him to gain some understanding of what the hell was happening with his balance. Training with his sickles as a wiggler had been one thing, but his center of gravity was different now. Calling back to all of the useless cavalreaper feeds he had downloaded and some of the more practical training he had engaged in (if he had – time was still a muddled blur), he started with footwork first. As with all things in his life it was an unqualified disaster. His stances were off. Where he ended out of movements his feet were precious inches away from where they would need to land. If he had to fight like this it would be a cull-sentence. Moving himself through a second set of forms brought the Highblood into the room.

Looking over his shoulder at the clown who had leaned himself against the monumental doorway, he scowled. “Liking what you're looking at or are you still working up the wherewithal to form speech?”

Snorting the GHB moved to sit against the wall not taken up by his pile. “Don't make a brother the cause of your stopping.”

Eyebrows arched up in mockery the Highblood purred at him. “Wouldn't want a boy to get out of practice. Important that you keep your wind during vigorous activities and the like.”

Feeling the hair along his neck rise in aggravation, Karkat hissed.

“So do you want to pail or what? If not you could go ahead and fuck off. Or maybe just lay down and I'll sit on your face.”

Having something that the Highblood wanted inside him emboldened him to the point of recklessness. Boredom might have been playing a significant role as well, but no one was around to question him about it. Stalking over he stared into the troll's face, irritated by how unnecessarily huge the man was and how smug.

“So what'll it be Priest?”

As a rule of life he tried not to give any credence to the fakeass clown bullshit. Sadly for his firm grip on reality, being respectful of the juggalo hierarchy and terminology had yielded better results than pure fury. What he needed in his life at this moment was not another concussion, but instead another sandwich, a quick fuck and something to do. Playing nice with the chip-clawed abomination would get him at least one of the three. Climbing the walls might have been an option when he was a few units lighter, but he did not trust his grip with the change in his weight.

Hands that were too big and calloused cupped his ass and his breath escaped in a soft ‘ha’. That would be the answer about which of the three was coming his way. The Highblood kneaded hands into his skin and looked at him from where he was settled on the floor.

“Want you to show me something forbidden.” Nuzzling his face against his bone-bulge, the Highblood mouthed over his slit, lips coming away touched with pink from where pre-material had started to collect and was saturating the cloth of his pants.  Pressing him forward, the Highblood burrowed in nibbling against the fabric-shrouded mound of his nook. Shuddering, Karkat took a handful of his horns on either side, not trusting his balance. The look on the Highblood’s face was suspiciously close to rapture.

“You might w-wanna try actually taking my clothes off. It works better.”

Catching his eyes in unexpected amusement, the Highblood rumbled. The vibration of his voice felt like one of his favorite nookworms at home, something that gathered against his pelvis. He unsheathed, bulge pressing against the fabric and wiggling toward the subtle warmth of the Highblood’s mouth.

Pressing a kiss against the struggling appendage in front of him, the GHB hooked his claws into Karkat’s waistband, teasing at the fabric. Karkat could feel the stretch of the band holding them up flex against his back and he whined with anticipation. His bulge sat heavy against the thin webbing of the fabric. If he had been more himself he would have questioned the tenderness of this exchange in contrast to all of those prior. Instead, thoughts warred in his mind, pressing through fast only to be discarded again. He could fuck the Highblood’s mouth, listen to the sound of him gagging as his bulge slid down the monster’s throat. He could use the old goat’s horns to hold his face against his nook and ride just the sounds of his annoyed growls, rutting against his mouth. The possibility existed of falling down into the monster’s lap and sheathing him inside tight, and of hooking his own bulge up and having a proper pailing for once.

All of the options made him jitter, his claws softly clacking against the horns he had in a death-grip.

The Highblood solved the conundrum for him, yanking down the front of his pants and swallowing him down like a snack. The slippery surface of his tongue pressed along the bottom of his bulge, moving in careful counterpoint to its thrashing. The whole of it triggered his aggression and made him weak-kneed from the taboo of it. The only place bulges really were intended to go was into oneself or another troll. Having teeth so close to his groin made his back bunch. Staring around the rise of his thorax, Karkat hissed at the Highblood.

“I swear to fuck by the unending anguish of the Mother, if you bite me I will find a way to decapitate you and shove my bulge down your windchute--eep.”

The end of his warning choked off as the clown swallowed slowly, eyes slitting closed in a blend of concentration and pleasure. Adjusting his stance, Karkat put his foot over the squirming mass of the Highblood’s bulge, initially having aimed for his hip. The growl he received for his trouble caused a dollop of material to slide along the inside of his thighs.

Using his newly spread legs to his advantage, the Highblood rubbed a thumb along the lips of his nook, easing up to press slow circles at the joint of his reproductive parts. Warbling out mating chirr at him, Karkat wobbled. The pressure felt like it was crawling up his spine and his bulge flicked in response, seeking globes that were not there for it to find. Adjusting his mouth carefully, the Highblood backed himself partially off of his bulge, tracing his tongue along the demi-ridges on the bottom.

The constant eye contact was both riveting and disturbing. Canting his hips forward, the Highblood leaned forward, gagging a touch as he settled in. Nose almost flush to Karkat’s bone-bulge, he purred.

The ringing in Karkat’s ears slowly faded into the sound of his own whining and the Highblood coughing off to one side. The lower half of his mouth was soaked in material, some dribbling down his forearms and trailing toward his elbows. Being out of season, it was not as much as it could have been, but it was still a mess. Emboldened and curious how long this would last, Karkat leaned down, lightly pressing his forefinger against the Highblood’s mouth.

“You look good in my color.”

“Hmmm.” Smiling in a way that seemed too long for his face, the Highblood smoothed hands up along his sides. “Are you feeling better now, little freakblood? Certainly seem like you got a little of the tension you’re always carrying out.” Leaning forward the degenerate started to wipe his face off along Karkat’s pants, further slurry-soaking them. Being trapped in the circle of the Highblood’s arms, Karkat was forced to watch as he nuzzled in, most of his paint remaining stationary.  

The smile was more unnerving than anything else. “Some cramping.” Since starting work on his eggs he had found that having an uneven release was not as painful as in the past. His gene bladder had been low-capacity for the last couple of the Highblood’s visits, and having nothing inside of him only created a vague discomfort rather than the heated distress he had come to expect.

Rolling his foot carefully, Karkat could feel the Highblood’s bulge coil under his arch. “You’re... uhm....”

Wracking his mind for anything that might break the awkward tension of the moment, he let the first question that came to mind roll out of his windchute. “You want to pail?”

Having to ask made a part of him die a little. It was a small part that could wait until later and then he would have proper funerary rites for it. Now was the time for dealing with the clown-terror and survival. Idly it occurred to him that there might be pheromone cues in effect that he had not thought of. One of the texts that Kanaya had lent him ages ago mentioned something about that. It would be worth looking up later if he could find a digitized copy.

“Nah motherfucker.”

Huh. Karkat eased his hands off of the Highblood’s horns, shaking them out. The prolonged grip he had been subjecting them to had made some of the muscles in his palms cramp.

“So. Uh.” This was awkward and nerve-wracking as hell. “You see something forbidden?”

Great one, Vantas.

“Of a sort, yeah. Though it’s more fun watching you fidget and squirm around something awful while you try and get your figure on of what’s happening. Did not exactly find revelation up in a nook. Heard many a motherfucker’s tried, but ain’t none yet been successful.” Licking his lips, the Highblood butted his forehead into Karkat’s hip, hard enough to rock him back. Looking at the angry bruise welling up under his skin, Karkat frowned down at the troll on the floor.

“You are a crazy asshole. You should see someone about that.”

Fear was for trolls that had futures. Maybe he was one of them, but he was not sure enough to risk it.

“Maybe I am.” Smacking his butt, the Highblood rose. “Gonna go and get my clean on. Can come if you want.” Honking, the Highblood made his way into the ablution trap. Karkat stood in the vacant space and stared after him.

 

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

Pressed up against the tiles of the ablution trap, Karkat keened. Rocking his ass back against the Highblood’s thighs he held the monster’s bulge trapped between his own. Grinding the slick of his nook along the weight of it, water slid and dribbled down his bangs. Ready and willing, his bulge twined around the exposed length of the Highblood’s. The troll loomed over him, forearms braced on either side of the wall and creating a living barrier between Karkat and the exit.

Their grunts and sighs intermingled. Every time the base of his bulge brushed along the one fighting the pressure of his legs it felt like electricity sparking down his spine. Though always willing, he did not feel any urgency to get the man in his nook. Palming the tip of the Highblood’s bulge he squeezed in time with his motions. Above him a soft whine joined the patter of water. The tiles around the troll’s claws cracked.

“Fuck. Fuck yes. C’mon. Spill.” Karkat muttered it like a litany of prayer, clenching his legs together. “Fucking get it over with and drop all hope of descendants down the drain to mingle with the rest of the shit. That’s all that you’re good for. Making nightmares.” A part of his mind realized that he was speaking about Gamzee. He jammed that thought far and away with the rest of the personal things that he could not bear to examine.

Teeth fitted themselves into his flesh and his bulge quivered as slurry dripped free of him. The chittering buzz filling his ears was a black solicitation if ever he had heard one. What the fuck the pain-factory behind him through he was going to do, Karkat could only guess. The painful ache along his pelvic area remained. Keeping in the spirit of challenge he hauled one of the Highblood’s hands down he slapped it between his thighs, poking sharply at his knuckles. “Fingers in there. You claw me and I’ll snap the front half of your bulge off.”

Maybe it was delirium speaking. Maybe he felt bold after getting a passable nook-job earlier. Whatever it was, the time for risks was the present. Shivering his way through a meager release of his globes, Karkat lounged against the tile. Staring up the line of the Highblood’s naked body, he was struck by how battered the troll seemed outside of armor. A good half of his bulk came from what Karkat was realizing to be adjusted drop-suit. Much like Gamzee, the man stood tall and thin. Pale-grey scars flit and jagged all over his body some almost faded from his last molt and many others standing fresh against the darkness of his plates.

Winding the behemoth’s bulge into his hands Karkat went back about rubbing it to slow purrs overhead. Eventually he achieved the result he wanted, indigo dribbling down his hands to course down his forearms and drip off his elbows. Their colors looked good together, swirling down the drain. What followed was a perfunctory scrub down, the adult moving through motions like they were second nature. Hair and junctures scrubbed, horns checked, claws checked. Everything doused and then a shake off. Not inclined to luxuriate in lukewarm water, Karkat followed suit.

Kurloz stepped out and into his room again, yawning wide enough to split his face in half.

“I’m staying.”

Karkat simmered. “I don’t want you here.”

The Highblood slit his eyes at him, clicking in dismissal. “Wasn’t fucking asking, wiggler.”

Taking a few deep breaths, Karkat watched as the Highblood settled down in his pile. He was long enough that his legs hung out awkwardly from the mass and Karkat snorted, unkindly. “Bad place to rest. Maybe you should go back to the terror-hole that is your block and fuck off out of mine.”

“Everything on this ship is mine, deviant. Including your shoutsome heretic self. Mark it and adjust afuckingcordingly.”

Standing between the Highblood’s ankles, Karkat tried to grasp the situation. It was as bleary as ever. The troll sitting in front of him was a distorted nightmare version of Gamzee. It made him so angry that the words tumbled past his fangs without consulting with him first.

"I fucked your wiggler." The Highblood tipped his face up at him, watching him through lidded eyes. Curling a lip up at him, the adult listened.

Rage shone through him like acid, mixing with all of the stale fear and the insidious boredom.

"Your get. I held him in my hands and I made his pupils flare as big as the moons. I stared into his eyes that were still fucking pupa-gray and I stole everything that made him indigo, made him fucking family away. All of the rage, all of the fury. I made him mine. He bared his throat and I tasted his pulse."

“And what, little bit, is that supposed to mean to me?” The Highblood leered, fangs flashing in a crescent of sharp edges. “Got a couple of handfuls of wigglers out there by now. All do. Other than yours. Think you’re a bit too fuckin’ tender to have shared that part of yourself with our glorious empire.” The purr that rattled through the air was condescension on a level that Karkat had not heard in sweeps. Hissing into the Highblood's face, Karkat spat the words out like knives.

"I will yolk you to me and make you a servant of my FUCKING HANDS. You will keen and cry and wonder what the fuck you did before you met me. Just the way you feel about how fucking good my nook feels when you're in it and how incredibly fucking privileged you are to get to taste that shit when your face is WHERE THE FUCK IT BELONGS RIGHT BETWEEN MY THIGHS."

The words tumbled out, burning their way through his speech-junctures and searing his lips. His wrists ached and there was a tension in his back close to unbearable. Like an over-full blister close to bursting. It felt like another troll was speaking through him, like someone else’s frustration shaped his mouth. Grabbing the Highblood’s face in his hands he papped, nearer to a slap than a conciliation. The sharp jaw under his hands turned toward him. The subtle broken-motor purr under his hands was the only reaction all of his words gained him.

Leaning against the wall prone under his hands and seemingly unconcerned about his thumb-claws near his ganderbulbs the asshole purred at him. Slow, tidal pulses of higher and lower intensity.

"You are everything a motherfucking acolyte should be."

“FUCK YOUR RELIGION. YOUR FAKE, ABSURD, SNAKE-TEEMING CELEBRATION OF THE ABSURD AND DISGUSTING. THERE IS NOTHING IN IT THAT I WOULD EVER REACH TO OR SERVE.” Everything was a mess. Everything was terrible. Bile burned at the back of his throat and he tried to get his hands to release the face beneath him. The persistent feeling that his veins were on fire remained, his pulse searing and surging under his skin.

“That is some right blasphemy there.” The Highblood’s pupils slit like thin lines, staring through the cage of Karkat’s claws. “You don’t speak on God like that boy. Even the most debased ain’t like to be forgiven for shit said untoward.”

“I. Hate. You.”

Kurloz closed his eyes, expression relaxed. “I know.” The in-and-out cadence of his purring slowly settled into quiet breath.

“FUCK!” Throwing his hands up in the air, Karkat backed away from the troll sitting in his pile.

“You’re here as it is ordained, pupa.”

Karkat stared at the priest.

“Burned you once. Sent you to the Carnival to retrieve what was mine. Now you’ve come back and you’ll give it to me, using that MIGHTILY UNRIGHT VESSEL OF YOURS. YOU TOUCHED THE FACE OF GOD BOY. FOR THAT YOU ARE BLESSED AND FUCKING CURSED. ”

“I never have a fucking clue what you are talking about.” All of the rage drained as quickly as it had come. Karkat realized it could have just been chucklevoodoo riling him up. A quick glance at the edges of the Highblood’s eyes confirmed that he had been working mojo on him -- a subtle sheen sat at the edge of his sclera and the hair around his horns stood a little straighter in reaction to the currents of energy. Pressing his palms against his eyes, Karkat rocked back on his heels. It was not as if he could leave the block, but maybe if he was boring enough, the Highblood would decide it was unfun to be there and leave instead.

“But you do, Knight of Blood.”

The fact that his hands had already been covering his eyes made it easy to hide his expression. The Highblood continued, his voice low and smooth.

“I remember things. Wrote them for myself in scripture. I’ve gone and read what has been passed down. I seen the thing that controls my Empress and I don’t want fucking any of it. The facsimile of a servant eyeless and faceless. Think you played a game brother. Think you played a game and I think you come out of it missing things. I am missing things. You took what is mine. Now you’re gonna incubate it and give it right back.”

Claws pressed Karkat’s fingers away, and the stretch of the Highblood’s grin was entirely too close to his face.

“You papped my wiggler, boy. Now you’re gonna summon him forth out of your bones and sinews.” Smoothing a hand down the front of his chest, Kurloz rested a hand over the jut of the eggs. Karkat swallowed thickly against the nausea rising in him.

“You touch the face of God, you gotta pay for the transgression.”

Rising off of the floor, the Highblood stepped into his usual attire, bulking up doubly and passing through the doorway with a bemused honk.

*

“So crazy alien sex hormones. That is why you smell so delicious.”

“Pheromones dingus, hormones are things that are both produced and act inside of the body. You can’t smell them.”

“Pfff. And no one cares other than you.”

“Everyone cares if it means that Karkat’s shoulders aren’t going to get dislocated!”

“I would say fuck you both, but I am actually very tired. For once in my whole woebegotten stretch of extended wakefulness, I don’t want to fuck anyone.”

“My heart is shrinking a size buddy.”

Cocooned between Jade and Dave, Karkat had assumed a partial grub-curl and was resting under the overturned box and between the two old couch cushions. After so long of sleeping dry, every tiny change to his pile woke him up. Their weights were set to either side of him, proportionally correct and so delightfully warm.

“I don’t feel good and I want to go home now.”

“You say the word and we end it.”

Karkat pressed his palms against his eyes, trying to think of any reason why he would possibly say no. The conversation with the Highblood whirled around in his head, making less sense the longer he stayed with it. It seemed like a fever-dream. “I thought you said that you couldn’t. That timeline, or something. We talked about this yes?”

Silence followed his question and Karkat slowly pushed himself up out of the pile. His companions were gone and in their place stood the Doc. Raising a shimmering eyebrow at him, she stayed at a respectful distance. “Who you getting your conversation on with Karkat?”

“No one. Just... fuck. No one.”

Lumbering her way over to the pile, the Docterrorist settled down across from him. "Wanted to make sure His Levity ain't been dropping you on your pan so much. Ain't good for you. Any neck pain?"

"Nah." The scanning-wand passed over his neck.

"Levity's been in a mood as of late. Been preaching something fierce."

Karkat could care less, but the Doc was one of the only corporeal allies he had in this shitfest. "Yeah?"

"Yeah brother. Been talking real serious 'bout the return an such. There is a second gospel." The wands and other sensory tools were put aside. "Set of cards they don't bust out so much. There was a split 'tween some of the families regards to what is true and what's straight bullshit but that ain't here nor there. Levity's the final word. Says that the End Times are getting right near."

The quality of her attention unnerved him.

"Says you factor into that real strong."

 

How he ended up at the midnight Massacre, Karkat was not entirely sure. The fact that he did have under control was that the top of Doc's shoulder provided comfortable seating. Instead of a forest of torsos and walk-sticks, the visible world was more a lawnring of horns in various curvatures and heights. A couple of the shitlords that were harsh with him were kicked by ‘accident’ and apparently enough of them are afraid of her that there came no retribution. The lore in vid-feeds and cinema made an awkward sort of sense. DTs were powerful allies if properly courted.

Attending mass with a naked face even as an infidel was high treason. To avoid the penalties associated with that she talked him into a subtle pattern laid over his eyes. The paint felt weird and crunchy.  It acted as a field of white highlighting everything he had tried to hide about himself. Two of three stare-downs had ended in him winning. The soda she slipped him a sip of is keeping the fear he ought to be feeling well at bay while not being enough to endanger the reason for him being there.

“You sure you aren’t gonna get busted for this shit? They aren't gonna break your horns off or use you for knife-throwing practice?”

“As long as Levity finds this shit amusing? Won’t matter much. Where the fuck am I to be taking you? You're allowed to be out and about, you just ain't to be near com devices nor any point of egress from the ship. Seems simple enough.” She had a point in that. It was not as if he could pilot a ship even if he somehow fumbled his way into one. The craft small enough to be stolen would be manual and those feeds were not ones that he had gone through. The ones big enough to have an on-board pilot would not respond to his command.

The Big-Top was a physical three-ring built into the heart of the ship. Meticulously maintained fabric spiraled up into the air to come to a point somewhere a few floors above them. Parts of the congregation walked wires overhead to an assortment of honks, taunts, and encouragements. LEDs, and a few glow-sticks highlighted the aisles. Acolytes meandered through them, handing out sodas and dermal-application drugs. Small cohorts stood together, talking and growling. Others murmured scripture under their breath. Remembering Gamzee’s propensity for slam poetry, he wondered if there would be freestyle battles.  Seating seemed optional and constantly shifting. Karkat did not trust any of them enough to ask to be put down. The Doc did not seem inclined to let him go either.

A knife-fight to his left simmered down into a cooperative juggling display. Putting a bulb to it for more than a second he felt bad for the second clown – she was flirting pitch at someone that wanted her pale and the results were irritating both of them. Having seen angry-juggler naked earlier in the week, he wanted to advise restraint and perhaps a moirail rather than a quick fuck. Smacking her horn in passing, the woman honked, rounding on him with a club up. Pausing and twirling it in her hand instead she fixed him with a smarmy look.

“Hey mutie. Miss me? We got some time fore sermon starts up. Know you want a little more of this.” Giving a full-body shimmy, the tall clown smirked at him.

Wrinkling his nose at her and snorting, he shook his head. “Illis... Sisss..”

“Issiix motherfucker.”

“Look, you all look the same, particularly when I've got my ganderbulbs jammed into my elbow or shut waiting to finish falling asleep due to lack of skill. Regardless, Issiix.” Taking a breath he leaned on the Doc's head, wishing that he had a chair to perch on. Beneath him she grumbled in easy-temper, head turned slightly to the congregation.

“The lovely lady who you are attempting to punch in the mouth with your mouth wishes to put her hands on your face in the gentlest way possible. Maybe pick up on what a sister's putting down for you and enjoy that shit.”

The juggler blanched. “The fuck you getting up in my business for y-smarmy living bucket?”

She straddled the line hard between fish-face and indigo. Judging from her uniform she fell a bit too far into the warmer hues to be swimming or higher in the ranks. The blending of the two accents was as terrible. Demi-fins along her jaw tapered down into her neck and had flared in irritation. It was cute and reminded him a little of Eridan. That was another set of memories to put far and away from him – thinking on the seadweller that had spoken with him once in a while hurt his heart and pushed his blood pressure up simultaneously.

“Because you're a good fuck and you'd be an even better one if you had some chill.”

A couple of the clowns around them sniggered and honks peppered the background noise along with an 'ooooh, just got told by a mutant sis. YoU GoNnA LeT tHaT ShIt FlY?” The warbling cadence of the speaker sounded so much like Gamzee's quirk that it made his throat close. If he concentrated he could see the glyphs on the screen, pulsing up and down like the waves that lapped at his shoreside hive.

The Doc put a stop to that by turning and facing the warbler and flicking her fangs at him. “Little heretic chucklefuck is mine. If you are to be touching at him I am going to be recommending that you be spaced for an incurable and sudden-onset motherfucking illness. You got understanding in your pan of the shit that I am laying out?”

“BiTcHsIs yOu Is MiGhTy UnFun aNd CaLaMiToUs. BuT a BrOtHeR gEtS hIs UnDeRsTaNdInG oN cLeAr.”

“Fuck off Malaas.” A soldier to the left that Karkat had not met but who was standing close enough to the Doc to be some sort of cohort jabbed the speaker with a metal-plated elbow, rolling his eyes as he did.

“FuCk OfF yOuRsElF.”

The soldiers redirected their energy into bantering and quickly enough he was forgotten. Squeezing the Doc's shoulder he waited for the festivities to begin. The ambient noise was the first clue. Honking filled the cavernous space and rose to a pitch and fervor that had his pusher hammering at the intensity of it. Pyrotechnics went off along the stage in a flood of purple and blue sparks, some burning oranges mixed in. Karkat winced, expecting that the whole fucking place would blow. Apparently pressurized interiors had been accounted for, or the light show was psionic.

The Highblood made his way onto the stage like a wave cutting through shallow water. Collective attention fixed on him and the level of chucklevoodo around him felt palatable.

“MY FECKLESS AND FEARLESS. Those who are not afraid, those who do not FUCKING BOW. WHO DO NOT FUCKING STOP. HOW THE FUCK ARE YOU? ”

A wave of sound crushed over Karkat’s ears. Whoops, bits of scripture and noise all comingled into a cacophony of sound passing over him.

“That’s just mindhoney and sweetbeetles fam.” Kurloz stalked along the perimeter of the ring, his hair swaying and clinking from bones and other trinkets tied in. The armor that he wore was more detailed than usual, indigo accents swirling and curving over the whole of it. In watching the Highblood move, Karkat felt like he was watching a model of the calcified internal structures of a troll made manifest on the exterior of adult-dark plates.

“TONIGHT WE TALK VOLUME. TONIGHT WE TALK ABOUT THE MOTHERFUCKING FURY. MAKE SOME NOISE AND PROVE TO ME THAT YOU ARE ALIVE.”

Eyes around him stared out of white and other garish masks, the level of devotion only matched to the imperialist kids who would sit and discuss Fleet politics in the street on homeworld. Church here seemed to involve a great deal of call and response. The Highblood would make a statement, a few or the majority of the congregation would holler back. On occasion one or the other of the older trolls might outright defy the Highblood, coming to one of two endings. Either there would be a ripple of laughter and a brief exchange or the offending troll would be called up to the front to fucking say something about it.

No one approached the center-ring to say something about it. As the service stretched on, his glutes started to ache from being in the same place. Tapping at the Doc’s neck to be let down had no effect. Instead she adjusted him so that he straddled the back of her neck and could lean on her horns instead. It was absurd, but arguably more comfortable than before. The ranting in front of him caught his attention even as the room’s attention shifted to him. Instead of being a faceless part of the crowd, the soldiers had turned with swarm-precision to stare at him and the Doc. The pressure of their regard felt like walls. Schooling his face, he stared back at them.

“WHAT?”

“You are the shit that is going to help the VAST HONK, transgressor.” Kurloz stared at him from across a sea of horns, shimmering in the intensity of the lights fixed down on him from somewhere overhead.

Karkat held on tight to the Doc who was still underneath him, neither supportive nor running. Her thumbs sat looped around her belt and she remained facing the GHB. “Uh.”

“That means heretic, that you will bring back what has been lost to us. Shit has been WICKED UNFUNNY TOO MANY SWEEPS.”

Honks and murmurs swelled around him.

“So inside of your burning sweltering carapace we are going to BRING FORTH OUR LOST MESSIAH.”

Though it took every ounce of self control that he possessed, Karkat did not put a hand on the eggs pressed against the back of the Doc's neck. The pressure of so many trolls staring at him was causing his shirt to stick to him as cold sweat slipped down between his shoulder-blades. Buzzing filled his ears and all he wanted was to drop down to the ground and find a way to disappear. 

"He's gonna be hatching bout three perigees from now." Kurloz's voice dropped almost to a whisper, and the ambient noise faded with it. Karkat sunk his claws into the Doc's hair and kept his back straight, trying for calm and managing contained terror. 

* 

Laying in the pile thereafter, Karkat shivered. His clothes were tacky and stank from perspiration and being in close-quarters with too many trolls. Breathing exercises did not stop the trembling in his hands. Burrowing under layers of cushion did not bring the warmth back into his core. They were using him as a Mother Grub to attempt another instance of an individual. Only the pan-damaged could think up something so absurd. Without a pan-mapping cerulean to overlay directives and personality traits, the wiggler would grow up to be a disappointment. If they were formed with a psychic, the limits of the map would be reached and then all bets were off.  If there was no behavioral coding to apply like they did to the helmsmen, then priorities and directives would shift as the individual grew. Eventually and inevitably his wiggler would form a sense of self and priorities. Anyone that came out of him would have to - he could not imagine anything different.

Curling around his middle, Karkat shook his head. These eggs were his. He was growing them and there was no way in the fucking universe that he was handing them over to be managed by the terror-mass that he had been globes deep in earlier. 

"But you have to." Rose rubbed her hand through his hair, pausing to wipe some of the oils in it off on his cushions. Scratching her nails slowly along his horn-beds, she wiggled down into the pile. 

"I have to what? There is exactly fuckall that I have to do at any given time and even less that I am capable of doing. What is it that you have in that complex mind of yours that you think I am going to accomplish?" 

"You're going to give the eggs over to the Highblood." 

"No." The word was out of his mouth before he had thought it through. 

"Yes." 

"Maybe you could ask Hal why that is the worst of the worst ideas that ever came out of your impossibility-filled windchute. Go ahead, flit away and come back. I have a great deal of time you see and absolutely nothing to fill it with other than the slow and creeping existential terror and dread that I marinate in. Really. I can wait."

Rose rubbed harder at his horn bases and he curled into her lap, winding arms around her waist. "They are my wigglers. I don't want to give them to clowns. We both know what happens with them." 

"You're carrying a copy of Gamzee. Kankri's will be the other egg that turns out to be viable. The third one is too small." The tone of her voice was so kind that it made it that much harder to hear what she was telling him. Names and memories that were not fully his shoved at him, feelings that had no context twisted his gastric sac into knots and pricked moisture at the edge of his eyes. 

Dave flopped into the pile on the other side, shoving at Rose's shoulder. "And if the cat had not escaped the proverbial bag, by god did it make an escape now. It busted out a filed down spoon, hooked it into a small hole in the knit of that bag and flew the coop like a yellow canary. I mean, secrecy and prisons are all kind of in the same vein, meaning that they hold things that could be potentially harmful away and keep them someplace safe. But really safe is just kind of a subjective term isn't it? WHAT THE HELL ROSE?"

"He needs to know. The sermon did not go quite the way I expected that it would."

"So you blow the lid off of the whole thing. That makes the most sense."

"He was the one that wanted to do it in the first place."

Finding his words, Karkat turned and stared up into the warm browns of Rose's face, focusing on the lilac of her eyes. "Bullshit."

"True life facts, as Dave would put it." Rose's eyes softened in pity. "Like I said, say the word and this ends in a heartbeat. We can try again later, try something different."

"I still...I don't understand." Images piled in on top of each other - his stupid neighbors on Alternia, Crabdad, the expansive halls of the meteor and Vriska's terribly clear cobalt eye unfortunately close to his face. 

"Because miss too-bossy and full of terrible ideas put a compulsion on you."  Dave's voice was flat, smooth in a way that communicated his displeasure. "Loathe as I am to ever admit that Vriska Serket was right -- you would not have been able to pull this off if you remembered everything. So we sent you in as an Alternian kid and let you live your life up until the point that you were found." 

"Why?" Karkat struggled to sit up and had a hand resting on his back and one to catch and lever himself up. 

"We're doing a mini-game." Rose smiled at him from the side. "Getting our missing people back. It'll be best for the new world if we have all of the players represented. That way we will have the broadest spectrum of powers and subtypes present." 

Dave sat with arms crossed tight over his chest, radiating displeasure. "This is the conversation that the two of you had. I mean, I'm all for bodily autonomy and shit, but we left these two last for a reason." 

Gamzee. Karkat slowly focused on an image, of a boy locked in a refrigerator, eyes half empty and lips curled into a furious snarl. They had left him. Anger and guilt tore at each other inside of his thoratic struts resulting in a heavy rush of nausea. "What does the plan look like?" 

Pulling her knees up to her chest, Rose leaned against them, looking down at the pile beneath her. "It's a long game. Terezi and I talked about it and we worked with the other seers for a while. You have to stay with them. This world... the one that you are living in now... it has the best chance of maturing into something that will allow the trolls to flourish, and leave the meteor worlds alone to thrive." 

The contents of her words rang hollow. "It's... no. Not... that's not how it went." 

"Time and Space fuckery." Dave leaned against his side, pressing his lips into the dip of his temple and humming. The sound was as sweet as the best painkillers he had taken. "Your mission, space cowboy, should you choose to accept it is to help reform the Alternian Empire inside before the vast Honk. I know it's going to be a metaphorical spherical confection stroll for you because you are the most excellent and the most stubborn." Dave leaned in, resting his forehead against Karkat's. 

"But you have to help shape Kankri and Gamzee. You're going to be changing the shape of Alternia on the scale of generations. By forming a better Grand Highblood, you change the aristocracy. By raising up the next Threshecutioner General who is going to say 'fuck this noise' and become a politician, you will change the fates of the lowbloods. And you know, while doing all that shit you're also going to have to lay some hands on a huge scary clown and imbue him with some chill. You got all that?" 

Karkat stared between the two of them and burst out laughing. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There we go! Little happier with the chapters, flow and general organization of this story! I was kind of just going along and doing my thing and now I have a clearer vision for where we are headed! I also made the porn more porny in ch 2 :D

“I’m here to see The Highblood.” Growling, Karkat stood between the pair of harlequins stationed outside of Kurloz’s office. Their uniforms were different than the foot-soldiers of the pandemonium. Cleaner lines ran along their sides and chests. Loping indigo-glyphs sat on sleeves and shoulders bristling with their implied authority.

The shorter of the two turned to him, tilting her head at him subtly. “He ain’t got time to fuck right now Mutie. Office-hours is only for business. And only thing what as interrupts that is her Banging Righteousness herself. You been promoted to Empress?”

The section of the ship that called him Mutie were less likely than not to voodoo or attempt to rape him. Instead of upping the volume he rocked back on his heels to peer up at her. “Maybe I have. Took Her to the dueling rings and fought it out and then started repopulating the race all by myself because I think the current drone-based method is a little impersonal.”

She snorted, tapping a fortress-sphere bat against the ground, the nails embedded in it screeching along the metal of the floor. “Nah wiggler. Ain’t like that. Both of us know that shit. You wanna come and sit in my lap while you wait though I ain’t gonna mind none.”

The second female at the door rolled her eyes and snarled. “Stop trying to fuck the flesh-bucket and get the fuck back to your duty. You let the slurry-rag bother at His Levity and I’m getting my ass culled. Before I die, I’m taking your fool carapace with me. Then we’re gon be stuck together in the messiah-blessed carnival and sister I ain’t that into you. Knock that shit off.”

Looked to him like two someones had broken up recently. Turning toward the more irritated of the pair he shook his head. “Not trying to pail anyone in a hall. I expect to find a concupiscent platform twice as lush as anyone you’re trying to grid in with awaiting me before I give up the goods.”

Snarly raised her expression bars at him so high that he wondered if they might actually make it to her hairline. “HAH. That shit’s church it’s so funny. Word round the halls ain’t nothing to that sort.”

“I’m all full of miracles.” Karkat let his voice drip into an irritation and disgust buzz to highlight just how excited he was about that fact. “So I can’t be giving it up to just anybody. I need soft-claws and maybe a dinner out. Candles. For sure better be something more palatable than rations. I am delicate.” Gesturing up and down along the line of his body he squared out his shoulders and stance.

“Gotta make that shit fancy boo?” Laughter bled into her question, transforming it into a purr. The first guard had taken a knee next to him, watching him through eyes crinkled with a mixture of lust and amusement. “I got candles plenty back in my block. You busy halfway-fore midmeal? Got me an hour and some change of rec-time and I’d love to spend it showing just how nice I can be.”

“Need a name before I’m going to get you naked sugar-sis.”

“Marset.” The smirk on her face held more smarm than he had ever had directed at him at once.

“Cut the shit nub-horns. We call her Satcha because that’s her fuckin’ name. Ain’t no one here using her surname.” It was to the second guard’s credit that she did not so much as twitch when Marset pulled a laser-sword. A good idea as the beam of said strifekind was hovering half a breath away from severing her throat ligaments.

“I think I’ll call her whatever she wishes.” Tendrils of intent curved in the back of his mind. It was clear to him what needed to be done. Both of them could be allies. They had spoken to him like a troll -- not an object. They were valuable enough to Kurloz to be placed outside as a symbolic gesture so they were worth courting. Even if they did not have use, it was likely trolls they were connected with did. Change started on the street and moved upward. It never went the other direction. This much was clear from having watched Kankri’s lives.

Walking forward to close the distance between himself and Satcha, he rested a hand along her non-engaged arm. “Cutting off your ex’s head is not a turn on. How fast you are is. And I don’t figure that His Levity will find gore on his entryway funny. He wouldn’t even be able to paint with it. Blood from the family doesn’t belong on the walls, does it?”

In all of space, there was one thing that Karkat knew for sure. That thing was that he was good at finding the soft parts of trolls and bolstering them. All of his compassion and all of his flaws had found his way into the humans - and they in turn had showed him how useful those skillsets could be to team-building. Rose’s advice rang around his pan, infuriating but true as it was. ‘You need to find allies. Softer touch than you normally take. I know you have no inside voice, but try to work within their framework first. Then let them come to you.’ That certainty allowed him to stand next to the towering harlequin and not quiver.

The click of her claw along the sensor panel was deliberate. The creeping hum of the laser cut out and the prickle at the back of his neck warning about danger similarly calmed. Exhaling and logging her sword, Satcha grumbled.

"Suppose you got an understanding of the family going on in your pan Mutie. Not sure how it came to you, but think that it might be related some to what you are twerking on."

Resting his knotted fingers over the bump of the eggs in his thorax, Karkat shrugged at her.  
"Maybe that is the case. What I do know for sure is that I would rather like you to let me in."

"Still ain't happening. Particularly as you've got your hard flirt on with her. She's got the nook-lice. You realize that right?" Ducking the punch aimed at her head, the second harlequin purred at him.

"They've got me on the good meds. If I'm going to make my way through the ship nook out and bulge first it probably would behoove me to have precautions in mind. What do you want to be called?"

The soldier determined the mode of address. Some highly wished to be solely addressed by their title or specification. Some were old enough to have a moniker. Most stuck with the grub-naming conventions of lusus-name first. Vantas was a strong name and if he could inspire the rest of the soldiers to use it he would feel much more powerful.

From the angle that he stood at he could see the door slide open and the inevitable exit of the high terror. His troublemakers slipped to attention with poise that he found dearly hard to fault. Instead of a pair of smiling and purring distractions they once again were figures of the establishment.

"And what the fuck brings this here to my threshhold?" Kurloz leaned down, smirking at him.

"Fuck seems to be a good third of your vocabulary so it it really is a strong guess. I am likely here to fuck.” Karkat leered up at him, jutting his useless horns toward Kurloz’s thorax. “Maybe it could be something else. I know that it is a stretch of your substance-addled pan but; if you never ask then we will all die an unfulfilled death, having never truly grasped the essence of the big questions! Instead we will all lay in the dirt or on the deck before getting back up to our fungus-motivated afterlife and ponder why, oh fucking why, could no one ask Karkat a question. Truly, he might have answered."

Satcha was visibly chewing on her cheek to avoid laughing. Her companion was doing much better in the composure department -- thoracic pillar straight as the architectural elements surrounding them. The Highblood’s face slowly cracked into a smile that was all fangs.

“What, oh abomination, brings you to my humble workstation?” The words shivered with threat-buzz, Karkat could feel the hair on the back of his neck prickle.

“I would like to formally request an audience.” Setting his hands behind his back in the best approximation he could manage of formal posture, Karkat kept his face neutral. “I asked the staff about procedures for doing so, but generally was met with incredulous laughter or kisses. Neither were helpful. This ship has a -marked- lack of discipline. You should be very proud for someone that takes such great joy in frivolity.”

In the space of a blink Karkat was tucked up onto his customary place on Kurloz’s shoulder. Apparently it was his destiny to be carried around by towering beings. The pair of harlequins fell into attention and the painted walls of the Highblood’s office came into view. Different scenes had been enacted on these frescoes and oddly shaped areas had been decorated with pictures of the Empress and other framed gifts.

“Not so much on the blood and damnation?” Mostly it was conquest -- of aliens, of trolls. All of it blended together into a mural of misery.

“Kept the exciting parts for my own self.” Kurloz deposited him on the top of his desk, tucked between two haphazard piles of forms. “You ain’t never the sort to seek me. The fuck?”

“You decided you were the sort to start eggs in me.” There was no script for this. He would just have to go with his gut and see where it led him. Kurloz was not Gamzee. Kurloz wanted Gamzee, but could not be allowed to have him on his terms. “Thought maybe...instead of just raping me we could... I dunno. Maybe talk or some shit. It’s boring being in my room all the time and you are older than anything that I could imagine. I’m sure you have one or two things to say that are more interesting than watching the paint on my walls slowly flake.”

The look in the Highblood’s eye was complex. Folding his fronds, the troll leaned on them where they interlaced with claws curving toward his palms. “If the paint on my blessed vessel is peeling there is gonna be something to speak on. State-of-the-art gloss. Shit is supposed to deal with blood, puke, sweat, and most low-powered strife specibi.” Arching his expression-markers in something passing for amusement, he turned in his chair, putting his boots on the other end of the desk.

“Scripture is the reason you're here. Scripture decrees that I will change the world. Carnival exists to fucking shape and serve the people. Family's gotta choose the worthy and dispose of all else. I cull, I direct- am the sensei to you incompetent ninjas. Would have done my fucking duty to Empress and homeworld earlier had I not had to slay an infidel rather than sate myself on him. Your ancestor pupa – could have been like you. You share the same chromatic taint.” The last was hissed, and Karkat forced himself not to growl in response.

The curve of his massive shoulders rose and fell. All Karkat could think of was the smell of Kankri’s flesh burning and how it had started out feeling hot and then progressed to shivering cold and numb. Drawing his knees up against the jut of the eggs, Karkat folded his arms on them and grub-curled. “What are we talking about? The decks that the wigglers learn when they're little? We talking about classical hymns? I know my Minahj and I know my Yonnce. I had a hate-friend that even got me into some vintage as shit Monaye. No where in any of those cannons is there mention of you.” Having had nothing better to do, he had done some of the extra lit-feeds Eridan and Sollux had provided at different points before Ascension. Eridan had thought they would be enlightening, Sollux that they were absurd. The appearance of them in his drive had everything to do with skill and little else.

“The fuck would there be?” Kurloz's eyes slit. “Ain't none of the rabble fit to speak on me or mine. Poets yes, all them, some of 'em generals too. But they ain't the ones to do the scribing for the family.” Leaning back in his chair, he ignored Karkat in favor of the vaulted ceiling above them. Burn marks charred the metal in long dual lines.

“You said, before that you left yourself notes. Did you have visions when you were younger?” Though he could care less about any of the insipid drivel coming from the priest's mouth context would build understanding. This much Rose and Jade had both assured him.

“Did my wiggler have them?”

Karkat stared back at Kurloz, eyes slit. “I don't recall.”

“Think you got plenty of recollection on in that pan of yours, filth. More than you know what to do with – flashes and dreams pressing at the spongematter and scrabbling at the backs of your ganderbulbs.”

“I just said that to make you angry.”

Kurloz tracked him out of the corner of his eye. “Anger brings the purest truths to the surface, infidel. Think you were the angry one of the pair of us.”

This was going nowhere. Just as he was ready to call it a loss the Highblood swung his feet down with a thud. Turning to face him his face got close enough that Karkat could smell the unmistakable tang of grease-paint intermingled with blood.

“Enough of this hoofbeast shit, pupa. Bring them out.”

Backing up bodily, Karkat's butt hit to edge of the table. Flailing out to try and counterbalance, the Highblood's hand locked around his elbow and held him in place. Karkat could not keep the tremor out of his voice for all of the effort that he put into it. Bodily contact amplified the voodoo surrounding Kurloz.

Shadows pressed in around them and the Highblood's fangs seemed doubly as long as usual. The face staring at him was a leering ghast – something like the corpses that he had found water bloated and distorted in the lakes near his hivestem. The claws pressing divots into his skin were knives.

“I-I d-don't know what you are talking ab-bout.” It was hard to think around the racing of his pusher, hard to focus around the echoing din of the Highblood's voice. It was all that he could hear – no other sound registered around them.

“Bring. Them.”

“I'm not hiding anyone!” Bravado had fled out the window along with any hope that he had left. This was all a futile, a long game before they flayed him open during one of the sermons. Sweat molded his shirt to his back and his gastric sac curled and pinched in knots.

“I seen them, wiggler. Strange aliens in talking with you. This ain't fuckin' homeworld. We see all, we hear it.”

No. The Highblood had seen Dave, had seen Rose, Jade. The thought of his claws in them was enough to make him gag, but nothing passed his lips. Tears traced along his cheeks and his teeth rattled as he shivered. Had he not hit the gaper before he had come to this meeting, he was sure that he ought to have pissed himself by now. Nothing about his expression ought to give them away. There was nothing in the universe, any of them that would let him give them up.

“There. Is. N-no-no-onn-ne”

Two things happened simultaneously.

John Egbert blinked into existence and took a hammer to the Highblood's temple.

Dave hopped up onto the desk, catching him around the shoulders. Giving John a subtle incline of the head, the three of them popped out of the office.

 


	6. Chapter 6

For the umpteenth time he woke laying on someone's bony knees. Dave was not a likely candidate-- he has no business being on the _Cosmic Joke_. Peering off to one side showed him flopped down on the floor in a position of classic Striderian irritation. He could finally take a deep breath - none of the ambient dread of the ship pressing down like it would flatten him against the metal floor. The temperature around him was not appropriate to a protein-storage container, and the omnipresent hiss of life support did not fill his aurals. The lap he had settled in felt familiar and dearly comfortable. John swung one of the iterations of the Warhammer Zillyhoo in a slow arc, the colors a mesmerizing blur. Reaching a hand down to his thorax, Karkat found it flat as always. The area surrounding them felt devoid of others -- the background buzz of outside presences conspicuously absent from his range of perception.  
   
"What the shit-heaving hellfuck just happened?"  The hand on his head stopped its travels through his hair.  
   
John turned his attention to him, shouldering his hammer. "Doomed timeline. That and you've still got mental-whammy going on I think."  
   
To his left, Dave hissed through his teeth. "Not like it's a big deal or anything. Everything just kind of turns on it's fucking head and we all die about ten to twenty minutes after that. I hate clowns. I hate them so much."  
   
John tapped his forefinger along he pommel of his hammer, his silence articulate in its length. Karkat flicked his eyes between them, trying to suss out what it was that they were so worried about. "What's the fuckup that makes things go sideways?"  Never again would he consent to have Vriska in his pan -- she was like a scuttle-buggy crash to the face. And even though it would be 'soooooooo easy!' to get this done, the experience thus far had been anything but.   
   
Dave scrubbed a hand backward through his hair, causing the blonde strands to fluff out everywhere before falling back over his eyes. "I don't know. I've tried this a couple of different ways and it is a little hard to figure out the perfect ingredient for alpha-timeline salsa."  
   
John leaned against his hammer, the head hitting the floor with a dull thud. "That one was a reach Dave."  
   
"Fuck off dude, I know. I just... we've been at this for a while and nothing is working. I don't want to keep watching that shit."  
   
The smell finally registered in Karkat's mind as well as the texture that his cheek was resting against. Brine mixed in with dust and the vague smell of paint. Turning and staring at Gamzee,  Karkat felt dizzy. The taller troll inclined his head.  
   
"Ain't working because it won't. Not the way you got it planned."  
   
The look that Dave shot him was acid. "If you have a better idea you ought to just go ahead and throw it on out there buddy. We're all waiting. You are the reason we're in this in the first place."

 

 **(Perigees Ago, But Not Many)**  
   
The small muscles in Dave’s back flex as he rides his bulge. He has draped himself backward over Karkat’s hips, displaying the sumptuous length of his spine. There is a place in human anatomy that seems to set most of them screaming. It varies depending on the sex of the human -- Jade’s is in her nook and Dave’s is tucked up somewhere in his chute. The placement on that one is highly suspect in his opinion. Human biology is weird. That is not something that stays long in his mind as Dave clenches around him, shivering as Karkat curls inside of him. Buzzing, Karkat traces claws along the outside of Dave’s thighs. The pressure leaves white marks that fill in with Dave’s alien-red. Pre-mat dribbles along the bulbous head of his strange bulge and makes it shine. Their mating styles are not completely compatible but it works well enough.  
   
Dave’s breath is like a song. Trilling low in his throat he reaches up and squeezes the meat of Dave’s delightfully plush rump. The motion drags him down a little more firmly onto Karkat’s bulge and a delighted ‘oh’ rushes out of him. Speeding up the tempo of the song is a matter of moving his hips. Rolling them makes Dave turn colors that are beautiful. His cheeks mottle with reds and pinks, his chest picks up a flush too. Humans get deliciously warm when pailing.  
   
This coupling’s rules are simple. No words, and no touching Dave’s bulge until he’s squirming for it. Jade explained to him what the term ‘edging’ means, and it is something that Dave likes.  It figures it would be - being infuriating to himself and others is one of Dave’s strongest traits. The not-talking part is hard. Talking lets him out of his head, lets him cover up how terrible at his life that he is. Instead he fixes his attention on Dave - a subject of study entirely worth falling into. It started as a dare and he is not going to be the one that breaks it. Some of the best movies from his wigglerhood had silence as an active component of the flush-scenes. Then again it may have been those vids were trying to pass as cinema when really they were closer to pailing vids.  
   
Dave shifts his weight, dropping his head back and offering his throat in a completely wanton gesture of submission. It is as much as silent request for attention as it is him getting into a comfortable position  Karkat practically can taste his pulse thundering under his tongue. Dave clenches with a soft moan, fisting his hands into the sheets bunched around them. The pressure is so good that he has to lay still. His bulge shivers and twitches, trying to find the seedflap that is not present. Reaching up, he folds his palm along Dave’s throat and tightens his fingers with deliberate slowness. The velvet-soft texture of his skin is a pleasure in and of itself. The beat of his pulse hammers against his fingertips -- chronometer accurate and strange for it.  His fingertips skate along the subtle sheen of sweat.  
   
Dave rolls his head forward staring at Karkat like he wants to devour him. Shades are not allowed on the concupiscent platform and it makes pleasure of tracking Dave’s expressions that much sweeter. Releasing his throat to a disappointed whimper he moves to trace a finger along Dave’s mouth, purring when it is trapped between his soft lips and blunt teeth.  
   
Good as it is, the angle is not great. Drawing Dave down he twines them together, chest to chest. Pre-mat dribbles along the lips of his nook making a mess of the sheets -- one of the multitude of reasons they went with black cloth as opposed to others. Buzzing against Dave’s ear he feels the hair along his partner’s arms stand up. Humans do not have the same kind of pale-response that they ought to, but he has found something that is close. Purrs get Dave to shiver and curl up close. Buzzes make his skin ripple and the tiny hairs on his arms stand up--shit is fascinating. All of Dave is sumptuously supple and it is fun to touch the different textures of him.  Nibbling against the paper-soft texture of his earlobe, Karkat trills at him again. Dave hums in response, leaning down and kissing him.  
   
The slick of his tongue slides into his mouth and Karkat loses his train of thought,  loses everything other than the warmth and the wet and how blissful it is to be cupped in someone's arms. Their elements are synonymous, heat and blood, pulse and time. Dave shifts his hips slowly, angling down so that Karkat's bulge slips partway out of the molten clutch of his body.  
   
What he wants has only worked with middling success in the past -- their frames are not built for it. No one can ever say that his humans are not adventurous, Dave in particular standing out in that regard.  
   
Not talking is not working. Nipping Dave's lip he arches brows at him. "Get in me first and I'll get back in you."  
   
"Hah." Dave smirks at him dryly. "I win. I win this bet so hard and we are putting the Threshprince in the time-out cabinet for a whole sweep. I cannot take his sicknasty shenanigans any longer."  
   
"It's not my fault that you have mmmmph--" Karkat gasped as Dave eased his dick inside, going slow to account for the extra girth of it. It was not nearly long enough, but it stretched so well. "-shitty taste in film." Stealing another kiss he angled his hips carefully. "Get me back inside of you." Without being able to see where he was angling his bulge was gently curling in on itself.  
   
Dave's fingers curled around it, gently easing it straight and back inside of him.  
   
This is what he wants. This is his favorite. Butting his forehead against Dave's he let their gasps commingle and lost himself in the instinctual shifting that pailing required. Orgasm came up on him in a slow wave. Dave moaned against his throat, twisting his hips in the subtle way that did not hurt.  
   
"Close."  
   
"Mmm." Dave sat back, keeping them connected while fumbling around to find a bucket near the foot of the platform. Sliding himself regretfully out of Karkat with a soft 'schlik' he scooped him up around the waist.  
   
Spreading his legs wide enough to accommodate the pail, Karkat thrummed as it settled between his thighs. The cool solidity made his nook clench, a sensation made much better by the addition of Dave's fingers stroking along the slick inside of him. Slurry dribbled in a metallic and liquid rain. The deviant brought his hands up and licked them, smiling like a meowbeast full of a freshly caught cheesebeast.  
   
Feeling the contentment of post-coupling hormones flooding his pan, he managed to make the offer rattling around in his mouth without stumbling over it. "I want to watch you finish."  
   
Dave beamed at him like he has offered him the last cup of apple juice. Sprawling backward in an overly dramatic flop, his human jutted his chin and fisted his dick. Squeezing from the base up in long and powerful strokes he kept eye contact. His mouth dropped open and the pants that Karkat loves so much started back up again, accompanied by hums and moans. His legs curled up slightly with the tension running through his body. His hips snapped up and into the motion. Scooting closer on the platform Karkat brushed claws along the inside of his knee, trailing small kisses against any skin that he can reach.  
   
Dave whined. "Fuck. Karkat." To the inexperienced it almost sounds like pain.  
   
Slitting his eyes and growling at him Karkat hides his smile. "Nothing I can do for you. It's in your hands."  
   
Positioning himself between Dave's knees he watches his fingers curl tighter, watches Dave's chest heave as he fights himself for release. It comes in a clench of muscles, in a long exhaled hiss. Grabbing one of the towels on the side-board he gives them a perfunctory scrub and settles in alongside his matespirit.  
   
Dave turns and touches their noses together, moving close to bonk foreheads.

  
It is perfect.


	7. Chapter 7

Hey coolkids: 

 

Thank you for reading this story with me! I’m about to start my second degree and do not have much time for long serials. But man do I hate it when people don’t finish them. 

 

So not to be That Guy, here is how this story ends: 

 

**A Gateway of Charred Timber:**

 

Karkat forked out of the We Won! Timeline due to the fact that half of Gamzee was missing after The Game, having gone off with Cal and into Paradox space to be presumably everlost. 

 

With only part of his soul intact, our favorite trashkid was having issues feeling pain, feeling emotion, self-caring, etc. Out of this problem came the solution: as everyone is already a god and in the good timeline, why not use those powers to dive back in the other timelines and pull players that they needed forward? 

 

Thus, Karkat gets sent into the Bad Touch timeline. Because of authorial reasons and the way things went down, the second egg was a different iteration of the Signless come back to deal with the Grand Highblood, and the first, a full version of Gamzee. 

 

Throughout the story negotiation would have occurred as GHB- who is not the stupidest dude ever, realized that this little mutant was carrying his destined rival. Karkat, realizing that he was in a position of power, having both the GHB’s direct descendant and another being that he wanted in power would be positioned as the egg-carrier to negotiate between the clown-fleet, the Empress and what later happened in Alternia.... 

 

Taking us to: 

 

**An Altar of Blood and Iron**

 

  * Wherein KK and grub-signless deal with Alternia before it expands out, takes over where it would have taken over for the Alpha kids session and further shenanigans are had. 
  * There is some dubcon shit happening with young!Gamzee and KK and the kids are living life and dealing with the stress that comes with dealing with clowns, and prophecy and whatnot. 



 

Finally going to: 

 

**A Pathway of Shells and Bones**

 

  * Wherein KK and The condesce have a meeting of the minds, the earth is safe, Signless hits maturation and effects revolution on society that doesn’t fail and is different and complicated
  * And KK steals away his half of Gamzee, heading back to the post game world where everyone lives together and he has grown exponentially, having been a leader, lover, and strategos to unexpected allies. 



 

Yaaaay. 


End file.
